


More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man's Pondering

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Realm of Song [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Goblin Rebellions, Goblins, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Humor, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25204582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s third year and the first half of his fourth year at Hogwarts. Harry is a proud participant in the next goblin rebellion, getting justice for his godfather, freeing artifacts who shouldn’t have to be enslaved to humans, and creating alternatives to silly human traditions.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Goblins & Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Series: Realm of Song [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423924
Comments: 379
Kudos: 2651





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will really make no sense unless you’ve read the three previous stories in this series: “Music Beneath the Mountains,” “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke,” and “The Dragon-Headed Door.” Like those fics, this one takes its title from Tolkien, specifically the poem “The Bidding of the Minstrel”; the section titles come from that as well as other Tolkien poems. This should have five parts, and will be posted over the next five days as part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series.

“Sing us yet more of Eärendel the wandering,  
chant us a lay of his white-oared ship,  
more marvellous-cunning than mortal man's pondering,  
foamily musical out of the deep.”

-J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Bidding of the Ministrel.”

_A Burning Wonder_

“But there was not even a _pretense_ of human justice.”

Harry winces a little as he watches Blackeye examine Sirius. His godfather had to be persuaded to turn back from a dog first, once they were inside the Healer’s cavern, but now he seems to have relaxed. The soft silver glow from the walls does that, Harry knows. He wonders if Sirius can hear the chant of the rocks who are happy to have been chosen to help Blackeye, who listened to them and gave them pleasing forms.

Maybe not. Sirius is still human. But he does spend a lot of time as a dog.

“No, I don’t think so,” Harry says quietly, when Blackeye looks at him. Sirius, his back and feet cradled by some of the carved rocks covered with woven blankets of dreaming cotton, isn’t answering. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but from what he says, the humans just assumed he was guilty because he was upset about Pettigrew. They put him in Azkaban.”

“That place,” Blackeye says, her head bowed as she moves her hands above Sirius, shaping the song-vibrations of the rocks to turn his skin transparent and show her his bones and organs. “I will see that place destroyed.”

Harry nods. He doesn’t doubt the power of the vow. Of course, no one in his right mind would ever accuse Blackeye of lying, either, but one might privately doubt the power another goblin has to keep his or her word. Blackeye, though, has muscles more dense than quartz and a will stronger than a Deep One’s tentacles. She will achieve it.

Blackeye lets her hands drift back and frowns at Sirius for a moment. Then she walks into a corner of the cavern and retrieves a vial made of singing glass and capped with bone. When she brings it back, she shows it to Harry. “Do you know what this is, young _amaraczh_?”

Harry examines the vial carefully, but has to shake his head. The glass and the bone don’t speak of each other as most objects with another object placed in them do. They speak against each other instead, and Harry’s ear is confused by the competing stories. “I’m sorry, Healer, no.”

“Then learn.” Blackeye takes the vial back and opens it. There’s a slight tremor in the air above it, and Harry hears a voice speaking of the darkness between the stars, the movement of frost, the brown trees with sere and withered leaves.

He gasps. “That’s a winter wind!”

Blackeye nods, not looking surprised that Harry knows. That makes Harry’s heart swell with pride. When you have your competency _assumed_ by an adult goblin on Blackeye’s level, then you’re coming closer to adulthood. “He has been frozen so long by Dementors that we must use the winter wind to cleanse his soul.”

“What are you doing?” Sirius asks hoarsely. It’s the first set of words he’s spoken since Harry brought him into Blackeye’s cavern. He turns his head and frowns at the vial. “Why would you use something cold on me? I’m already cold.”

“The winter wind will cleanse your soul,” Blackeye repeats. It’s her “no tolerance for fools” tone, which Harry last heard when she was removing the Horcrux from his scar.

Harry moves closer to Sirius’s bed and squeezes his hand. “It’s all right, Sirius, I promise,” he adds as Sirius gives him a dubious look. “This is goblin healing.”

He turns to Blackeye and dips his head a little, a private apology for Sirius’s doubt. Just like your competence is assumed at Blackeye’s level, questioning it is assumed to be asking for a duel. “I’m sorry, Blackeye,” he says in Gobbledegook. “He’s human.”

Blackeye pauses, then snorts and nods. Harry relaxes. Not that he was all _that_ worried about her challenging Sirius to a duel; he’s only seen her do it with her patients once they’re healthy again. But he’d just as soon not lose his godfather after finding him.

“That’s true,” Blackeye says, and then leans close to Sirius and releases the winter wind from its vial.

Sirius gasps and shivers as the wind courses over him, swirling over his chilled muscles and driving the greater cold before it. Blackeye is already getting out the vial of elemental fire that she’ll need to use next, to balance the winter wind. Sirius clutches hard at Harry’s hand and whispers, “You’re sure this is necessary?”

“Yes, Sirius, it is.” Harry strokes Sirius’s arm and shakes his head a little. He’s said it a lot. Sirius has reason to distrust humans, after the disgusting things they did to him, but why does he keep distrusting goblins? “Look, it’s already getting warmer in here,” he adds soothingly, because Blackeye is pointing the vial of fire at Sirius.

The fire’s voice speaks of burning trees and new growth and the summer sun, and Sirius’s face visibly relaxes as he listens. Or maybe as he feels, because he mumbles something about his muscles warming up.

“He’ll sleep now,” Blackeye says shortly as she rearranges the stones so that they cradle Sirius better, and then arranges several flat blue stones around Sirius that Harry remembers from his own healing with the Horcrux. “Leave.”

Harry bows with his hands at his sides, and then leaves, thoughtful. He hopes Sirius will recover soon, and begin trusting Blackeye. Otherwise, she might challenge him to that duel after all.

But for right now, he can’t do anything. He goes back to his room to meditate and sing and listen, and plan the war that the goblins are going to have to fight against the Ministry and Voldemort and maybe Dumbledore. Harry almost thinks that he’s changed the old man’s mind with his song about the Realm, but he can’t be sure.

_Sing Us Yet More_

Harry is carefully studying the plan for a new kind of blade that Toothsplitter is trusting him to forge when he hears the shrill alarms ringing through the caverns. Harry jerks his head up so fast that his daggers rattle in his belt. He knows that sound, but he’s never heard more than one of the Horns of Eren blow at the same time.

This time, the echoes bounce and roll over the rocks, and goblins begin pouring out of their caves. Harry immediately turns and runs up the path to the bank. When he whispers a question, the path alters for him, becoming steeper but shorter, and Harry emerges into the private offices and then keeps running straight for the front.

“Harry.”

Harry nods to Ripclaw, the goblin who found him all those years ago and gave him his first knife. Ripclaw is standing with a short sword in his hands right in front of a heavy vault door. “Ripclaw. What is it?” The Horns are still singing, exquisitely turned vessels of the most alert silver from the oldest mines, made to voice their warning whenever some great enemy approaches the bank. “Is the Ministry attacking?” The humans might have brought the war to them before the goblins could go get it.

“No.” Ripclaw glances at Harry, his eyes white with fury. “Dementors.”

Harry’s eyes widen, and he wishes they could turn white, but he’s human in body, so they can’t. He understands at once. The Dementors are here because Sirius is here. “What’s the best way to fight them?”

Ripclaw motions to Harry’s face. No, his mouth. “There’s a particular song that we can use against them, although it’s only been prepared and not used. We never thought they would dare to come _here._ ” He bares his teeth, which grow naturally into serrated points that some goblins, like Harry, envy. “You don’t know it. Follow along.”

Harry nods, and walks beside Ripclaw up into the main front space of the bank. There are only a few humans there now, since it’s their New Year. They’re standing, dazed and cold-faced, against the far wall.

Harry raises his daggers and signals to the tall guard-goblins near the doors that he’ll be joining the song. They nod and push the doors open.

A huge mass of Dementors is hovering outside. Harry shivers. The ones on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year that he convinced the train doors and windows to shut on suddenly look small in retrospect.

“This is our place,” says Toothsplitter, Harry’s mentor and a Master Smith, stepping up to face the Dementors. The medallions on her belt that proclaim her skill jingle and ring. She is shifting slightly from side to side, beginning the tempo of the protective song without the Dementors realizing what she’s doing. “You will depart.”

The Dementors might not understand Gobbledegook, although Harry thinks it’s likelier that they do and don’t care. They press closer to the open front doors of the bank.

The command rolls through the walls and the floor, making the marble tremble. “ _Sing_!”

And everyone sings.

Harry finds the rhythm of it easily enough, because Toothsplitter isn’t the only swaying goblin, and the huge blocks of marble that make up Gringotts are trembling in their places, enough to drive the waves of the dance through anyone who isn’t dead. But he doesn’t know the words at first, so he tunes his voice to the ones that echo through the veins of gold in the marble. Gold’s song is the easiest to follow, making it one of the first metals that was ever mined by goblins.

And then he comes roaring in on the words once the first chorus has been repeated, and now the words can be stacked atop each other like iron bands, reaching out and spiraling around each other, adding more strength as they repeat.

“ _Golgonannaiz, ixarushacz thuliumon eranehemmanez,  
Amaraxiz amairnx amtupieh, tupieranehemmanez,  
Fangignan! Amair airatiz ssulion ssadher ssamhio,  
Golgonannaiz, ixarushacz thuliumon eranehemmanez…”_

The Dementors slide closer and closer to the bank, but by now the waves of sound have built high enough to turn on them. If he squints, Harry can just see them, iron-colored and gold-colored and built as rings, but rings with spikes. The Dementors may not be able to see them at all. Harry doesn’t know if they actually have eyes.

But when they run into the spikes, they _know._

The Dementors shriek in high, thin voices that Harry disapproves of, they run so counter to the song. They try to press forwards anyway—they must _really_ want to eat Sirius’s soul—but their hands dissolve when they come closer to the bank. And then the notes of the music strike them and start stripping their robes off.

The Dementors back away and flood, wailing, into the sky.

Harry can feel the few wizards in the bank starting to stir, but he doesn’t turn his head or stop singing until the stones cease to vibrate. Voices come down one by one, replacing the notes and the strength they took, making the final chorus one Harry knows, a whisper of thanks to the objects that sang with them. Toothsplitter, as the first singer, is also the last, clearing her throat when the magic ebbs.

“We have another cause for our war,” she says.

Harry looks at her and smiles. Sirius might be human, but the goblins know that Harry wants to keep Sirius with him, and Harry is a _goblin._ That matters a lot. “Yeah,” he says.

_Golden Imaginings_

“I _demand_ to be told why you prevented the Dementors from entering the bank.”

Harry rubs his thumb down the hilt of his dagger that’s made of a basilisk fang. He wanted to be included in this meeting because he knew it would be about Sirius, when the Minister for Magic demanded to meet with Ripclaw and Gorgeslitter and the rest, but it’s hard for him to control his temper.

Since entering the room, the Minister has committed so many insults it’s a wonder he’s still alive. He’s yawned, he’s asked for hot tea when no one else was drinking it, he sat down first, and he’s raised his voice to make the walls ring with it.

Harry does take his hands away from the daggers when he sees Toothsplitter frowning at him, though. He’s been insulted, of course, but he’s not the only one, and it would be crass of him to claim sole insult and sole right to duel the Minister. He’d have to fight a series of duels when that one was finished against the goblins who have prior claims.

Harry has no illusions about his own abilities when facing a well-trained goblin warrior. He only looks impressive to the humans at Hogwarts because most of them have no idea what a real fighter looks like.

“Why?” Fudge demands, and slaps his closed fist on the table.

The shock travels around the room. When someone makes a gesture like that, he’s saying that he doesn’t need weapons to take on the best warriors in the Realm of Song. Someone _has_ to duel him now.

Unless…

Harry draws the dagger that’s not made of a basilisk fang and gently stabs the Minister in the shoulder with it. Fudge gasps and grabs the wound, blood running between his fingers. The two wizards who came with him, in the scarlet robes of Aurors, sit there for a long moment before they spring up and point their wands at Harry.

Harry sighs. He doesn’t think much of their reflexes. He turns to Toothsplitter and bows his head in her direction, since she’s his smithing master and thus the goblin who can claim the most direct power over him in the room. “Toothsplitter, I apologize for my hasty and ill-considered action. However, as you can see, the Minister has a weak arm, and it would be dishonorable to fight him.”

Toothsplitter nods, her face wrinkled in the way that means amusement. “I can see that, Harry. We shall discuss your upswelling of rage later, and appropriate means to control it.”

“What are you talking about?” one of the Aurors blurts. The other is conjuring bandages to wrap the Minister’s shoulder. Apparently they don’t know healing charms. Harry is wondering more and more why these were the ones chosen to accompany someone the humans respect. “He stabbed the Minister! He has to be arrested!”

“Do you make a habit of arresting thirteen-year-old wizards then, Auror?” asks Ripclaw, one of the goblins who spends the most time around humans and knows their laws best. Of course, goblin laws don’t take account of an arbitrary number of years, but whether someone can act and think in a competent manner. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“I mean—he _stabbed_ the Minister!”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, letting his head droop and a false sobbing note creep into his voice. “I was so angry! I couldn’t control myself.”

“What did you have to be angry about, for fuck’s sake?” the Auror demands, but the one who’s finished wrapping the Minister’s arm stands up and shakes his head. The Minister is still moaning to himself and doesn’t seem inclined to say anything any time soon.

“We didn’t come here to listen to insults from children. We came here to find out why you wouldn’t let the Dementors inside the bank.”

“Why should we?” Ripclaw asks. “This is our sovereign territory, and certainly we wouldn’t _submit_ to getting our souls sucked out.” At the word _submit,_ there’s a shift of axes and knives around the room.

The one Auror is still glaring at them, but the wiser one winces and seems to try to take a hidden glance around. “There are rumors that the Dementors sensed Sirius Black near the bank.”

Ripclaw sighs harshly. “The way they sensed him on the Hogwarts Express, and at Hogwarts, and several other places in the magical world, and yet haven’t caught him yet?”

“I mean—that is to say.”

Ripclaw waits, and then sighs again. It’s the great one with a sound like gravel bouncing around his throat that Harry still hasn’t learned to imitate. “Is that all you have to say?”

“You don’t have any right to keep the Dementors out,” the Minister croaks. Harry is disappointed in himself. He obviously didn’t stab the man hard enough if he can still speak through his shock. He’ll have to work on sharpening his daggers _and_ his eye.

“Yes, we do.” Ripclaw looks bored now. “By the treaties that you reaffirmed when you took office and that we negotiated with the wizards centuries ago. If you want to send the Dementors into the bank, then you’ll need to do it while they’re _chasing_ Sirius Black, or whatever other criminal you’ve condemned to a soulless existence.”

Harry shudders, and doesn’t care about the way the Aurors are staring at him, as if they think he ought to be on their side. The Dementors are worse than the Deep Ones, which at least are defeated enemies. Dementors just want to devour souls because someone told them to.

“You destroyed two Dementors.”

Harry grins. No one told him _that._ He feels proud to have been part of a defense that not only drove Dementors away from the bank but did a great deal of damage.

“We’re owed a weregild for that,” the Minister continues in a voice that is not full of gravel and is never going to be full of gravel when it’s grown up, either. “It’s in the treaties. When you kill Ministry employees—”

“What were you paying the Dementors, Minister Fudge?”

It’s Blackeye, who just walked into the room. The goblins, including Harry, bow their heads to her in a wave that goes around the edges of the room. She has a circle of blue stones hovering around her. Harry doesn’t think it’s the same circle that she used to treat Sirius, because he probably still needs those, but all that means is that she can do more damage with them.

“What?” Fudge gapes at her. Harry sighs. Humans just have _such_ bad manners. Why wouldn’t you bow your head to someone that you’d seen other people bow their heads to, whether or not you know who they are?

“How much were you paying them? That determines the amount of the weregild.” The blue stones are revolving harder around Blackeye’s head now. Harry thinks they might surge out and strike someone at any moment. He just hopes that it’s Fudge and the other humans. Sometimes healers don’t discriminate when they’re angry. Real goblins are expected to have the speed to get out of the way.

“We weren’t paying them anything! Why would we pay creatures anything?”

There’s more loosening of axes all around them. Harry conceals a second sigh. Among the other skills humans lack are _looking around a room._

“Because if you weren’t paying them anything, then their deaths simply freed slaves,” Blackeye says. “And that means that you don’t have the right to demand a weregild.”

Harry nods. That’s common sense. He didn’t _think_ the Dementors were being paid anything, but he could have been wrong. He glances at Fudge and sees the man’s face turning as red as an apprentice’s who’s slipped up in front of his master.

“You will _regret_ this _defiance_ ,” Fudge says, and then staggers out of the bank, still holding his bandaged arm. The Aurors back out after him, their wands still pointed at the goblins, which is the first sign of good sense that Harry’s seen from them.

Toothsplitter taps him on the shoulder with a closed fist as the door shuts. “That was impulsive, Harry. Others had the right to duel him first.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, and bows his head so that she can see his throat and the depths of his regret. “I just didn’t want the whole room to explode in blood. We don’t want to start the war with the death of the Minister.”

“True enough,” Ripclaw says. “There are better targets. And we have a list of them upcoming.”

“We _do_?” Harry can’t help blurting. He hasn’t heard much about the progress of the goblin rebellion, even though some of his actions have played into it happening. Then again, he’s away at Hogwarts a lot of the time, and also just a journeyman smith. His elders don’t technically have to tell him much.

It seems they’ve relaxed that restriction, because Ripclaw smiles at him with all his fangs on display. “Yes. The first one is going to be Azkaban.”

“Because of the Dementors last night?”

“Yes.” Ripclaw glances around the room, where everyone is nodding heads and beating fists on their weapons. He’s just the first one to announce what’s going on, not the only one who agrees with the plan. “We want to make sure that the Ministry doesn’t think they can send soul-eating beings against us again.”

Harry smiles. “Can I go along?”

“You can be in the second wave,” Toothsplitter says. As his master, it’s her right to make that decision.

“What about Sirius?”

“Black is still under my care, and will obey me if he wants to live,” Blackeye points out.

Harry nods again. He supposes he can always show memories to Sirius later if he can get hold of a Pensieve. Or maybe Sirius will just be happy to know that Azkaban was destroyed and won’t even want to watch a memory of it. Harry isn’t sure he would want to, if people destroyed a prison he’d been confined in.

_Islets Forlorn_

Harry stands in the boat formed of leather stretched over a light wooden frame, and squints. Ahead of him, the island of Azkaban is low and stony in the sea. It’s surrounded by a swirling mass of darkness. When he tries to listen, he can only pick up the distant, shrill shrieks that the Dementors gave outside Gringotts.

“How are they fighting them?” he asks Gravensword, Toothsplitter’s other apprentice, who is standing next to him.

Gravensword smiles. “With songs that are more offensive, and with Changers.”

Harry catches his breath. The Changers are _serious_ weapons, which can only be made of agreeable stone and metal. Usually it’s obsidian and bronze, which are respectively grateful to get out of volcanoes and to be forged into existence. They seek out the greatest advantage that the enemy has and destroy it. With the Dementors, they would either make the Dementors warm or make them unable to fly.

Or maybe unable to eat souls. Harry stares at the swirling darkness ahead and shivers in excitement.

“Be ready!”

Harry grips his daggers. The boat, which has been sliding through the waves while complaining in a grunting voice about how both the leather and the wood would rather be at home, bumps to a stop on the shore of Azkaban. Harry leaps out. He performed some Warming Charms to keep himself from getting cold in the winter ocean and the snow falling around them. He doesn’t have a goblin’s thick skin, more’s the pity.

“Strike Dementors!”

Harry leads with his basilisk-fang dagger, because it’s the weapon that he thinks might have the best chance to actually hurt a Dementor. He hears a scream from right in front of him and ducks, and then his dagger cleaves through a black robe and pins something to the ground. The thing is cold and reaches out and grips his ankle with fingers like daggers themselves.

Harry stomps down, hard, and hears the Dementor scream and something crunch. Harry grins. He’s wearing boots that Fangsmore, the best weaver in the clean, made for him out of the defeated basilisk’s hide.

The hand lets go of his ankle, and he moves ahead, running beside Gravensword. Gravensword swings his blade around in front of him, and hits a shadow that flinches back. Harry joins him in a charge across the island in the direction of the prison, which is already crumbling under the pressure of the goblin war-songs.

Toothsplitter is suddenly not far from them, her fingers dancing frantically through the air. Fire and sparks of molten metal trail her. Harry ducks as one of them blazes overhead, then feels foolish. It’s not as though Toothsplitter would hit him.

The last stone of the prison breaks apart, and the dust floats away like the shadows of Dementors. Revealed are humans in tattered robes, huddling in one space and staring as though they don’t know what’s happening.

They probably don’t, Harry thinks, a little sympathetic because of Sirius. On the other hand, they don’t know that all the prisoners are innocent, and they don’t want to leave them roaming around when it’ll cause trouble and crime and more strife with the Ministry. That’s why Toothsplitter and the other Master Smiths are here.

Toothsplitter tilts her head back and begins to sing so loudly that the bones of Harry’s ears vibrate. The others join in, swirling cascades of sound that pour to the earth like water. The prisoners begin to sway back and forth, even the ones who look as if they’d like to get up and run.

As the warriors corral the last Dementors and kill them, Toothsplitter and the other smiths create helmets. The molten metal quickly cools and forms itself into obedient shapes. It always responds best to goblin voices and not goblin hands. Harry watches in envy. He’s a journeyman, but he isn’t at this level yet. It’ll take a long time for him to get there.

When the helmets are complete—they look like half-helms, but the gaps in them are filled in with strands of sparkling silver music—Toothsplitter and the other smiths run forwards and jam them over the heads of the prisoners.

The helmets sparkle and shine and then mold themselves into a perfect fit. Harry sighs as he watches the prisoners slowly slump over in place. Toothsplitter and the other Master Smiths use the rest of the molten metal flying in the air around them to build shelters that will glow with the remembered heat of the forge. They’ll keep the prisoners from freezing to death until the Ministry can come to the island and decide to do something else with them. The helmets will keep them asleep and dreaming, no threat to anyone.

 _Much more humane than the Dementors,_ Harry thinks happily, and steps back into the boat to let it bear him away from the island. The boat is more than happy to do so.

*

“What you did is an act of war!”

“Yes. It is.”

Even Fudge is smart enough to listen to Stone, Harry sees. She’s an ancient goblin who speaks for the Nelakhkhakan Clan, a Master Smith beyond all Master Smiths, and the sapphires in her ears and the steel at her neck and waist make her formidable to a human who probably has no idea what kind of honor she’s granting him by speaking to him. She lays her hand on the axe in the middle of the table between her and the Minister and looks at him serenely.

“We have begun a war. The wizarding world is without honor. They sent Dementors to attack one of our banks, itself an act of war. And they also spread lies and would not tell the truth about the deeds of one of our people.”

“Who is that?” Fudge is sweating, his eyes fixed on the axe in the center of the table. At least the wound in his shoulder is healed, Harry sees. He wonders idly whether Fudge managed to heal it himself, or if one of the Aurors did it.

“Harry Potter.”

Fudge jolts and turns to Harry. “I was never aware that anyone in the wizarding world had lied about what happened the night you defeated You-Know-Who,” he says.

“Oh, not that,” Harry says. He smiles at the Minister. He hasn’t been foolish enough to say that Harry isn’t a goblin, which wins him some points in Harry’s ledger. “What happened at Hogwarts at the end of my first year. I protected the Philosopher’s Stone there from a man who was possessed by the spirit of Voldemort. But Headmaster Dumbledore said that we couldn’t tell the truth because it would damage Professor Quirrell’s reputation.”

Fudge leaps back in his chair and splutters, “What are you talking about? You-Know-Who is _dead_! It was entirely responsible for the Headmaster not to spread the lie that he’s alive around!” His eyes dart back and forth, as if the spirit of Voldemort is about to fly through the wall.

Harry shakes his head a little. “No, he’s alive. Or, well, what passes for alive. He was possessing Professor Quirrell, and he also has artifacts that he can inhabit. I think we need to hunt them all down and destroy them. You’re a wizard, so you would probably know more about magic like that—”

“You are a _liar_!”

Stone’s medallions jingle, and Harry’s daggers ring as he draws them. He stands up. “What did you say?” he asks quietly.

“You’re lying,” Fudge says. “You _have_ to be! You-Know-Who is _dead_!”

“You question my honor as a goblin,” Harry says. He manages to keep the appropriate amount of anger in his voice, but it’s hard. “That means that I have no choice but to duel you until one of us is dead.”

“What?” Fudge stares at him. “You’re being ridiculous. You’re thirteen years old, and I certainly won’t duel you.”

Harry sighs. “Then I have to take my satisfaction in other ways.” This time, no one but the humans in the room appears surprised when he stabs Fudge—again, with the non-fang dagger—in the shoulder, and gathers up the blood that flows to run down his blade. Stone is the one who begins humming, but the others take it up so quickly that in seconds Harry is simply a goblin with a united wall of sound behind him.

“What are you doing?” cries one of the Aurors, drawing his wand.

Harry only gives him a contemptuous glance. It won’t work here. “I curse you, Cornelius Fudge,” he says. “I curse the tongue you use to dishonor goblins, to do nothing but stay still henceforth, unless you speak the truth. I curse the hands that you use to insult us to be unable to cast magic, unless you perform neutral acts. I curse the body that you use to add to your dishonor to always turn around and walk out of the bank, until you are ready to accept honor as a goblin understands it.”

He shrugs a little when he sees Stone’s judging gaze on him. Honestly, the curse might be too merciful, but Harry thinks it’s always kind to add that bit of escape for a human. They’re so unused to honorable behavior and acting like real people, after all.

“ _Confringo_!” yells the Auror, but the spell simply fizzles and dies on his wand.

Harry sighs. “Honestly, I’m still a student and young in the ways of the goblins, and _I_ know better than that. You can’t simply cast a curse at a goblin acting honorably in a place of power for his people, not when you’re serving a dishonorable person.”

He would have said more, but Fudge gets up then and marches out of Gringotts. Not because he wants to, Harry knows, but because Harry’s curse is acting on him, and his body is taking him out of the place that he’s dishonored by refusing to accept a duel.

“You’ll pay for this,” the Auror tosses over his shoulder at Harry before he chases the Minister.

“Why do humans have such ineffective threats?” Harry asks Toothsplitter as the goblins begin talking quietly about the next phase of the war. “I used to think it was just because they _were_ human, but I used to be and I learned better.”

Toothsplitter pats his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise, which makes Harry beam, because it shows how seriously she takes his opinion. “Honestly, most of them are poor listeners.”

And that, Harry thinks as he goes to drop the blood that he used to curse Fudge with in the deepest pit in the Realm of Song, is the truest answer he’s likely to get.


	2. Chapter 2

“Did you get to participate in the attack on Azkaban? I heard it was very exciting. Did the Ministry’s army of Heliopaths come out to oppose you?”

Harry smiles at Luna as they settle at the Ravenclaw table. This is the first time they’ve seen each other since the holiday, because Toothsplitter decided it was too dangerous for Harry to ride the train with other students—Aurors were on the platform—and sent him by the tunnels of fire instead. “I didn’t see any Heliopaths. Just Dementors. But it was exciting, and Dementors are extinct in Britain now.”

Luna’s eyes get a little sad at that. “I don’t want to think of anyone becoming extinct.”

Harry pats her shoulder. “I know, but they weren’t really free, you know? They were enslaved just like the basilisk was being enslaved to the spirit in the diary. It was for the best that they be set free. And we treated them like honored enemies. We faced them and destroyed them ourselves.”

Luna nods, apparently a little reassured, and they start listening to the song of the stools and torches, which are always amused by the new crop of first-years.

*

“Mr. Potter, come with me.”

Harry ignores Professor Snape’s command when he walks past the man’s office on the way to Charms. For one thing, the man was so dishonorable as to be a bully and refuse the duel that Harry proposed to him. Harry would have cursed him, but Snape has gone past a line that Fudge never did, and earned Harry’s deep contempt without such mercy.

For another, Harry has Charms, and it won’t do to be late and disrespect a professor who actually deserves the respect.

A hand closes on his shoulder and jerks him around. “Listen to me, you little _brat_ —”

He doesn’t get far before the stones beneath his feet buckle and rise and slam him into the ceiling. Snape’s hand opens in protest and he lets Harry go. Harry sighs as he stares up at Snape, trapped now on the hump of stone between it and the ceiling.

“That really wasn’t smart,” Harry said. “Do you want to be added _personally_ to the goblin war, the way the Dementors were? I don’t think that’s a good idea, but I’ll do it if that’s what you want.”

“What is going on here?”

Harry glances up with a smile as Professor Flitwick comes down the corridor. He’s glad that it was Professor Flitwick who found them and not one of the other adults. They’re all too human to understand what’s going on here. “He told me I had to come with him, and then he jerked me around with his hand on my shoulder.”

Professor Flitwick puts his hand over his eyes. “Severus, how many times have I told you that you _can’t_ do that? The school speaks with Mr. Potter. It won’t put up with your mistreatment of him even if he would be inclined to do so.”

Harry just nods, and decides not to add that he wouldn’t put up with it, either.

“Get me down from here, Filius!”

“I can’t,” Professor Flitwick says, shaking his head. “I can’t speak to the stones and make requirements of them like Harry can.” He turns to Harry. “Could you do it, please, Mr. Potter?”

“Harry, my boy, please let Professor Snape down.”

That’s Professor Dumbledore, who looks old and weary. Harry wonders if he had friends among the Dementors, and feels a little sorry for him. He sighs. “Stones, would you please let the professor down?”

The stones take a moment to think about it—they’re independent actors in their own right, after all, not just there to serve goblins—and then roll back down into the floor. Snape drops with a bump. His face is very red as he gets off the floor and dusts off his robes.

“Five hundred points from Ravenclaw!”

Harry shakes his head as the stones open beneath Snape’s feet this time, drop him down, and then seal around his waist. Some humans don’t listen very well, as Toothsplitter said, and some are clapping their hands over their ears and singing childish songs.

“Harry, I did ask you to let Professor Snape go.”

Harry blinks at the Headmaster. “Sir, I didn’t make that decision. The stones did. They don’t like the tone he’s using to talk to me.”

The Headmaster turns very slowly to Snape. “Severus. I am going to ask you to apologize to Mr. Potter, and to reverse the points that you took from Ravenclaw. It seems to be the only way that you’ll be free again.”

“I am not going to _apologize_ to the attention-seeking brat who is exactly like his father!”

“Please don’t cut off his hand,” Harry says very quickly, because he can hear that grumble gathering in the castle. The floor thinks it’s a grand idea, but the walls disagree and think the man’s head would be better.

“What?” Snape is staring at him.

“The floor wants to cut off your hand, but the walls want to cut off your head.” Harry pauses to listen. “And the ceiling just wants to crush you in your sleep tonight. Look, all of you, thank you very much for the defense. But I don’t think this is the best way to handle it.”

“You—you are _threatening_ me?”

“I did that last year already, with the duel,” Harry reminds him. “This is the castle making plans to kill you. I’d be a little more concerned, if I were you.”

Snape only keeps staring at Harry. He’s stuffed his thumbs into his eyes, as well, Harry thinks. He glances up as someone moves down the corridor, and sees Ginny Weasley heading towards him. He smiles in relief. He’s been teaching her to listen to objects more often as well as to swim and defend herself. Maybe a human interceding is the best result.

“I came as soon as I heard the floors talking,” Ginny gasps, leaning against the wall for a second. “What’s going on?”

“Snape insulted me and took five hundred points from Ravenclaw and tried to pull me off my feet,” Harry explains. “So now the floor and the walls and the ceiling are all arguing about different ways to kill or punish him.”

Ginny pauses. “We can’t let them?”

“ _Miss Weasley_ ,” Professor Dumbledore says repressively.

“Oh, very well,” Ginny says, and turns to look at Professor Snape. She’s almost fearless, with her chin up in the air and her hands no longer trembling the way they did at the beginning of the year. Harry’s very proud of her. “Listen, Professor Snape, Harry isn’t even commanding the castle to do it. It just likes him and the way goblins pay attention to objects, and it wants to kill you. If you apologize, you can live. If you don’t, then you can die.”

Snape stares at her. Harry wonders if he’s going to listen even to her. She’s Harry’s friend, so Snape may decide that’s the same thing as her being a “Potter.”

(The last name focus confuses Harry. He didn’t know his parents, so how can he act like his father would? And he’s much more a goblin of his clan. If Snape was addressing him that way and expecting him to obsess over smithing and be too quick to draw his daggers, that would make more sense than expecting him to behave like a Potter).

Snape finally grits his teeth and spits a quick, “Sorry, Potter, points reversed,” through them.

The floor takes a long moment to consider it, but finally lets him go. Harry nods in approval as the hole snaps open and then mounds up beneath Snape the way the stones did when they first slammed him into the ceiling, so that he can stand on the regular floor. “Thank you,” Harry says.

Snape doesn’t bother with the thanks. He straightens his robes and stalks back into the office.

Professor Dumbledore turns to Harry. “I understand that it might not happen on a regular basis in goblin culture,” he says gently. “But I would appreciate it if you could try to make exceptions for Professor Snape and—allow some leeway for his perspective.”

Harry shakes his head. “There’s no such thing as leeway for insults, sir. I’m sorry, but if that happens again, then the castle is going to react the same way—or the sinks, or whatever other objects are around. And next time, I may not be quick enough to stop it. Snape is the one who’s going to have to change.”

Professor Dumbledore walks away without another word. Harry is a little surprised that the man didn’t want to talk to him about the war and the Dementors, but maybe he doesn’t see how it’s connected to him and his willingness to ask Harry to lie yet.

Well, there’s something more important Harry has to do now. He turns back to Ginny and bows to her with his fist clasped over his heart. Ginny blushes bright red and bows back to him, even though she doesn’t have to, and then turns and walks away back down the corridor with a light skip in her step.

“I think we were on our way to class, young goblin,” Professor Flitwick says in Gobbledegook.

Harry beams at him. He’s glad that he has an adult here who can speak the real language, who _sees_ that he’s a goblin and is comfortable with it. He thinks it’s something he would never really get otherwise.

_Words Half-Forgotten_

“Professor Lupin? I have a letter for you from Sirius.”

Professor Lupin drops the goblet of potion he was about to take towards the floor. Harry is quick to catch it. He peers at it in interest. “Is this the Wolfsbane that Snape was brewing the other day? Doesn’t it taste awful? Has anyone worked on trying to improve the taste? Does it help you with the transformation?”

Lupin has backed up against the wall of his office and he’s shaking. Harry frowns at him and puts the goblet on the floor. “Sir? I promise, I haven’t told anyone else about the fact that you’re a werewolf.”

“How did you know?” Lupin whispers.

Harry bites his tongue against saying that it was completely obvious from the very first. He’s learning _some_ lessons about how to live among humans. “Sirius told me.”

“Sirius Black.” Lupin shuts his eyes and takes a huge breath that makes his chest almost flutter. “The mass murderer? The wanted fugitive?”

“The only people who think he’s a fugitive are the Ministry, who were stupid enough to start another goblin war,” Harry says. “He’s innocent, and he never got a trial. He’s told me that the real traitor was Peter Pettigrew. Poor Sirius was the one who suggested they swap places as the Secret-Keeper, and he cries a _lot_ when he tells me about it.” Harry shakes his head. He never knew his human parents, but he’s sorry for how much their loss cost Sirius.

“No, Harry.” Lupin is keeping his voice soft in the way that adult humans do when they’re talking to human babies. Harry doesn’t even know why Lupin bothers. He’s a _werewolf_ , why doesn’t he embrace that difference and be different himself? “You must have mixed it up. Sirius is a very skillful liar. I know. He fooled me for years. Peter Pettigrew is dead, killed by Sirius in a fit of rage.”

“No,” Harry says patiently. “There was only a finger left behind, and he can turn into a rat. And Sirius has seen a picture of him in rat form, and he knows that Ginny’s brother had him as a pet. But he disappeared a little after Sirius got here. Sirius was searching for him when he was here as a dog, and I’ve been looking since Blackeye won’t let Sirius out of healing yet, but I can’t find him.”

Harry does have a plan to deal with that, but so far it hasn’t worked, because it involves asking other rats about Pettigrew’s presence, and the house-elves keep the castle annoyingly clear of rats. But Luna is in the Forbidden Forest talking to some of the rats there each week, and surely she’ll find something soon.

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Lupin slides slowly down the wall.

“You should, sir. You have keener hearing than most humans, after all.”

Harry thinks that Lupin will cheer up because that’s a compliment, but instead, Lupin shivers like Harry told the walls to kill him. “Please,” he whispers hoarsely, “I don’t want you to ever say something like that again, Harry.”

Harry sighs. “All right. But I still have a letter for you from Sirius.” He holds it out firmly to the professor. He wasn’t there when Sirius wrote it, and he isn’t going to open it, either. Things like this are private.

Lupin takes the letter and turns it over in his hands, which are shaking again. Then he swallows what might be his cowardice—Harry hopes so, because being around someone this frightened is honestly irritating—and tears the envelope open.

There’s only a small piece of parchment inside, but Sirius lingered over what he wrote there for more than an hour. Harry watches closely, because among goblins he would want to be near to support someone receiving such an important letter, but Lupin clears his throat delicately, and Harry sighs and turns away.

“He says that he’s innocent,” Lupin whispers.

 _I told you that._ But Harry is trying to be kinder about—things, and just nods and says, “Yes, that’s true. Did you want to see a memory of him confronting Pettigrew? I don’t have it with me because I don’t have a Pensieve to put it in, but he could send it to you.”

“He would be willing to offer that to us?”

Harry has to turn back, although he keeps his eyes away from the letter. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he? He’s innocent. He has nothing to fear from his godson and his friend seeing the memory.”

Lupin drops his eyes as if ashamed, and goes back to stroking and pondering over the letter. Harry decides that perhaps he isn’t going to say anything else interesting after all, so he puts his hand on the doorknob and asks it to let him out. The door swings open gently at the same moment as Lupin clears his throat.

“Yes?” Harry asks politely, turning back around and shutting the door so it doesn’t have to stand open.

“I was worried when I heard about the war the goblins had started with the Ministry. And someone said that you actually want along to Azkaban and killed Dementors with your daggers.” Lupin gives Harry a worried smile. “I know that isn’t true, because not even goblins would be so reckless as to take you with them, but I thought you should know people are spreading those rumors.”

“Don’t worry, they aren’t lying about me,” Harry says, touched that Lupin cared that much to inform him. He must know more about goblins and their attitudes towards lying than Harry thought. “It’s true. I did confront the Dementors and I killed a few of them. I wasn’t instrumental in confining the prisoners with the dream-helmets, though. You’d have to talk to my master Toothsplitter if you want to hear about that.”

Lupin turns dramatically paler, although he was already pretty pale. Harry scrutinizes him narrowly. Ginny looked like that last year when she had the diary. Is there another piece of Tom Riddle’s soul drifting around here? It’s possible.

“But—why would they take you along?”

“They wouldn’t take me in the vanguard. And they made sure that I was safe.”

“But they’re being _reckless,_ challenging the Ministry this way. And I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen now that they’ve destroyed Azkaban. The Ministry isn’t going to have a _choice_ but to take that as an act of war.” Lupin passes his shaking hand over his face. “Why would you be caught up in that, Harry?”

“I’m a goblin.” So Lupin doesn’t care so much about the lies being spread by the Ministry after all, and he doesn’t think of Harry as a goblin. The disbelief spreading across his face proclaims it. Harry sighs and shakes his head. “Professor, what do you want me to say? This whole war started partially because Dumbledore wanted me to lie And Sirius, who is important to me, was wrongfully accused and put in that horrible prison for twelve years. And the Ministry sent Dementors to our bank to get him back.”

“The bank is under the lawful dominion of the Ministry,” Lupin begins.

 _Oh, it’s ignorance. That’s better than just ignoring._ “No, it isn’t, not according to the treaties. And Fudge came into the bank and made a bunch of accusations and gave us a bunch of insults. So I cursed him with his blood to not be able to lie or hurt us.”

Lupin sits down hard in his chair. “Curses are incredibly advanced work, Harry. You could have hurt the Minister.”

“Do you not care that the Dementors could have hurt _us_?” Harry asks quietly. “That Sirius could have had his soul sucked out?”

“I mean—of course I do, but you’re too young for all of this.” Lupin waves his hand around. “Sirius should have come to me with the evidence of his innocence. I could have handled it. You’re a child, still.”

“But Voldemort didn’t think so, and Snape doesn’t think so, the way he keeps giving me grounds for a duel.” Harry shakes his head. “And my people don’t think so. I need to be protected because I’m not as good a fighter as a goblin warrior yet, but almost no one is. It’s going to be all right, Professor Lupin,” he adds, when he sees Lupin’s mouth opening. “We’ll protect Sirius and get Pettigrew and get Sirius a trial. You’ll see.”

Lupin shivers and bows his head. Harry wonders if he should stay or go, but then, abruptly, Lupin springs up from his chair and howls.

“Oh, you didn’t drink your potion and now you’re transforming.” Harry sighs a little as he watches Lupin drop to all fours and get covered with hair. “Sorry for interrupting and preventing you from drinking your Wolfsbane.” Transforming without it looks painful.

Lupin glances around the room with his jaw dropping open and his mouth dripping with saliva. Harry frowns. Honestly, that doesn’t look sanitary. He wonders if someone has worked on a potion aimed at reducing the amount of werewolf drool.

Lupin focuses on him then. His eyes are bright red and more than a little mad. He slinks around the desk, crouching as if he’s going to spring.

“Stop that,” Harry tells him, and then repeats the words in Wolf, using his fingers around his ears to outline the necessary movements.

Lupin stops for a second. His ears come up, and he stares at Harry as if he’s looking for fur and a tail. Then he snarls and, apparently tired of the slinking, just coils up and springs all at once.

Harry moves gracefully out of the way, and asks the floor if it’ll help him. The floor uncoils into what look like stone chains, and they grip Lupin’s paws and hold him in place. Lupin tears at the stone and howls and scrapes and flings himself around and in general acts like some of the bad-mannered dogs who don’t want to walk on leashes that Harry has seen in the middle of Diagon Alley.

“You’re loud,” Harry tells him.

Lupin utters another chilling howl.

Harry sighs. He had other plans for this evening, but he’s the reason that Lupin didn’t drink his Wolfsbane potion, and the reason that he’s in so much pain now. Harry sits down on top of the desk and thinks for a bit before he’s sure that he can do a reasonable translation of a goblin New Year’s tale into Wolf for Lupin. He starts motioning with his fingers and practicing his growls, then starts telling it.

Lupin snarls and strains to get to him, teeth snapping close enough that Harry has to move back on the desk a few times. The desk doesn’t feel like growing taller when Harry asks. But after a few minutes of Harry telling the story of Snow-Eyes and the Cavern of Scales, Lupin falls silent, staring up at him with blazing eyes.

“…and she came around the corner that the path of quicksilver had led her to, and found the sparkling wave of it reared up in front of her…”

Harry is proud of his translation of “quicksilver,” a combination of “fast” and “moon,” and it seems to soothe Lupin—the pride, or the story, or both. He falls into a heap in the middle of the office, still held by the stone chains but closer to being curled-up now. He even rests his snout on his tail at one point, and yawns a little, which reminds Harry of Sirius in dog form.

Harry smiles at him, and keeps telling the story.

*

“What’s that?” Ginny asks, dancing back from the owl that’s slanting down to Harry on the grounds. They’ve been outside practicing Ginny’s knife-fighting skills for almost an hour now, and Harry is incredibly proud of her. She’s getting very good at this, for a human with no prior training.

Harry takes the note from the owl, scratches its head, and then sighs as he opens it. The parchment is even upset about being used for such a stupid purpose, that’s how bad it is. “It’s another apology from Professor Lupin.”

“About transforming in his office?” Ginny is striking at her own shadow, spinning around and kicking. Harry has impressed on her the importance of not wasting a single moment. She doesn’t listen as well as Luna, but it’s pretty well.

“Yeah.” Harry sighs and shakes his head, dropping the parchment into his pocket. He’ll use it for notes later, and maybe that will soothe it. “It’s my fault, anyway. I’m the one who kept talking to him until the time passed for him to take his potion.”

“Can you tell him that?”

“I did, and I informed him why I can’t accept his apology. It would make me complicit in a lie. But he just won’t _listen._ ”

“Well, talk to him again and maybe he will.” Ginny hefts her knives. “Can we go back to practicing?”

“Yeah, all right,” Harry says, happy to work with a human who’ll listen. He was going to do Lupin the favor of not thinking of him as human, but apparently he doesn’t like that, so Harry, reluctantly, has to put him back in the category of humans who clap their hands over their ears.

_Restlessly Daring_

“But there’s not really a goblin rebellion going on,” says Michael Corner loudly. He’s sitting down the Ravenclaw table from Harry, the paper spread out.

Luna gives Harry a pained look. Harry nods to her. It’s only fair that he take this. Luna handled the last misconception. She smiles at him in thanks and goes back to talking with the ant who tried to steal her sugar yesterday. She thinks she might be on the verge of learning its scent-language with her Sense-Enhancing Charm.

“Yes, there is,” Harry says, leaning over so his yearmate can see him. “I was there when we destroyed Azkaban. It’s a real rebellion.”

Michael stares, his fingers tapping the paper, and then shakes his head. “That’s not what the _Daily Prophet_ says.”

“Well, but they wouldn’t,” Harry says. “Because they support the Ministry, and we embarrassed the Ministry.”

“But why have there been no strikes since then?” Michael folds his arms and nods around the table. He doesn’t have an adoring audience, but he’s pretty good at pretending he does. Harry is a bit impressed.

“Because we’ve been moving underground,” Harry explains. The goblins have no worries about him telling anyone this. It’s not like the Ministry can put up a real resistance. “We’ve taken away the lodes of silver and gold that the Ministry depends on to forge Sickles and Galleons. There’s always been a supply of money that wasn’t under the control of us goblins, but now there isn’t.”

Michael stares at him. Harry waves his hand a little. “I can’t take credit for that, though. I didn’t come up with it, but I was there when it was discussed.”

“That’s _illegal_!” Michael bursts out.

“So was asking for a weregild when they didn’t pay the Dementors anything, which Fudge did.” Harry shrugs. “Lots of things aren’t illegal in war.”

“I mean—aren’t you worried about the people who might starve because of this war?”’

“We aren’t taking their vaults unless they fight us. We would _never_ do that.” Harry makes his voice gentle and serious. A goblin warrior wouldn’t be so gentle if Michael confronted them with this silliness, but sometimes Harry not being accepted as a fully-trained warrior yet is useful. “And the Ministry could have not sent Dementors to our bank or called us liars and started the war in the first place.”

“Mr. Potter, please come with me.”

Professor Dumbledore has swept across the Great Hall towards him. Harry sighs a little as he gets up. He and Dumbledore have sort of had a truce since he came back from the holidays, because his description of the Realm of Song before that seemed to calm the man down, and there have been no private visits to his office. But Harry thinks that’s about to change. “Sure, sir.”

*

“You said that you started the war with the Ministry because they called the goblins liars.”

“Yes, sir. We can’t really tolerate that.”

“I still wish you thought of yourself as human, Harry,” Dumbledore says, but he goes on before Harry can ask why. “Does that mean that you have also started the war with _me_ because I asked you to conceal the truth of Professor Quirrell’s possession?”

Harry blinks. He would have thought Dumbledore knew this without having to ask for confirmation. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

“But there have been no attacks on Hogwarts.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t do that,” Harry says, a little shocked. “There are non-combatants here, and objects that want to go on existing. Azkaban was different because those poor walls and floors were so miserable about containing the prisoners. They _asked_ us to disassemble them so they could go on to a different existence. But we have instructed no goblin to deal with you directly, of course, and taken half the contents of your vault, and prepared tunnels around your old house in Godric’s Hollow that we could use to attack you if we had to.”

Dumbledore drops his glasses, which he took off to polish. Harry catches them before they can break on the desk, just like he caught Lupin’s potion before it could spill. The glass of the lenses has an interesting song, but Harry has to ask it to wait as Dumbledore is blurting out words.

“You took half the contents of my _vault_? That is impossible!”

“Well, no, sir, it isn’t. We did it, you see.”

“There was no notification of this!”

Dumbledore’s magic is lashing around the office. Harry looks at him in concern, but, well, he’s still the one armed and trained here, and he would back his speed with his daggers against Dumbledore’s speed with his wand any day. “We sent you an owl when we did it. It would have had the official seal of the clans on it.”

“Not the Gringotts seal?”

Harry shrugs. “The bank is the way we deal with humans, most of the time, but in this case, you offended goblin honor. I’m not a bank employee, either. The seal would have looked like this.” He draws his dagger and traces the symbol, the crossed knife and rock, in the air, and then lights it on fire with his wand when Dumbledore stares blankly at him.

“I—recall a letter with that seal. I thought it was odd, but I didn’t recognize it, so I threw the letter away. Of course I never would have done that with a letter that had the official Gringotts seal!”

“Well, it didn’t come from Gringotts,” Harry has to point out again.

Dumbledore watches him with a hopeless expression. Harry reaches out to pat his hand. “All you have to do, sir, is say that you’re going to tell the truth, and let me tell people about Professor Quirrell.”

“How can I damage Professor Quirrell’s reputation?” Dumbledore whispers. “How can I cope with this?”

“Well, I just told you how, though,” Harry says. It’s depressing when humans don’t even listen to _English._ “And why would you care so much about protecting Professor Quirrell’s reputation? He let Voldemort into his head willingly. That’s not something I did even when I was carrying around a piece of his _soul._ ”

Dumbledore takes a deep breath. “Trust me when I say that there are secrets about Voldemort than must be kept, Harry. I would like more people to acknowledge that he has returned, but if people knew that his spirit was active enough to possess others, what is to keep servants of his from seeking him out?”

Harry shrugs. “But Quirrell did that even when most people thought he was dead. Concentrate on fighting him when he comes back, not trying to control everything.”

From the slow way Dumbledore blinks, he might actually be incapable of taking that advice. Harry feels sorry for him—actually, truly—but he has laid out the courses of action that Dumbledore has. It’s not his fault that Dumbledore keeps trying to find a third course that doesn’t exist.

“Will you restore the money to my vault if I spread this rumor?”

“It’s not a rumor, and not me personally. But you could write to the clan heads and explain what you’re doing to make up for asking me to lie, and I think they’d probably give the money back. They haven’t spent it,” Harry has to add, because he knows that Professor Dumbledore will probably have that misconception. “They just took it as a punishment.”

“Why do they think they have the right to punish us this way?”

Harry tilts his head. Dumbledore is still thinking of Harry as a human, obviously. “Because you wanted me to be a liar, sir, and I’m a goblin.”

“You are a human boy! Who is important to the fight against Voldemort.”

“How?”

Dumbledore shakes his head. “If you had demonstrated the maturity to be told that, then we would not now be having this conversation.”

“If you insist, sir,” Harry says quietly, and gets up and walks out of the office.

There are humans who listen—two of them, maybe three if he can count Sirius—and humans who listen some of the time, and humans who don’t, and humans who clap their hands over their ears, and humans who are singing their own song so loudly that they think everyone else dances to their tune.

*

In the end, Dumbledore sends a private apology to the goblins, so his vault is restored, and Harry sees one article about Quirrell being possessed. No one human pays much attention, but Harry doesn’t see that as a huge problem. Dumbledore didn’t promise everyone would believe Harry, just that he would stop making Harry into a liar.

As far as Harry’s concerned, he’s kept the bargain.

In the meantime, the war against the Ministry is proceeding apace. A few Aurors tried to invade the bank and disappeared. One of the Ministry undersecretaries, a woman named Umbridge or something similar, proclaimed that goblins were dirty creatures who should all be put to death, and she lost her vault and was mocked by goblins who went into various shops she frequented to tell people all about her (and what she used to spend her money on). That gets enough laughter that Umbridge resigns her public position.

Professor Flitwick did talk about resigning, but as far as the clans are concerned, he doesn’t need to. He just needs to counteract any nonsense Dumbledore spreads, and he’s done that with a bright, cheerful manner when the Headmaster did try to insinuate there was something wrong about the way the goblins were conducting the war.

By the time Harry is on the train with Luna, heading back to London, he is confident the Ministry knows it’s losing, and will make the ritual submissions needed, including an apology for sending the Dementors to the bank.

But things would sure be easier if they could find Peter Pettigrew.

“Harry,” Luna says suddenly, when they’re about five minutes out from King’s Cross.

Harry blinks and glances up. Luna looks embarrassed, which is so rare that he reaches out and puts his hand over hers. “Are you all right? Did someone say something mean to you?” He’s visited several people over the last year and explained that they can either stop bullying Luna or they can fight him. Not one person chose the duel, which is a little amazing.

“Yes. I—I found something, and I didn’t tell you. I forgot because I was so busy helping Daddy research articles for the next edition of the _Quibbler._ ”

“Never apologize about that,” Harry says firmly. “The _Quibbler_ is important.” It makes Luna happy, so he knows it is. “But what did you want to tell me?”

“I found Peter Pettigrew,” Luna says, and extends her hand. On her palm is a crystal cage with a Stunned rat lying inside it.

Harry stares at it with his mouth open, while Luna says anxiously, “I hope you’re not too angry. I took the liberty of asking some of the spiders, and it turns out that he never fled from Hogwarts grounds at all. He was living in Hagrid’s hut, and so none of the rats from the Forbidden Forest could find him, but the Acromantulas in the forest sent some small spiders back with Hagrid to make sure that he was properly taken care of, and—”

Harry hugs her, hard. “You’re perfect, Luna. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Oh.” Luna smiles at him. “Thanks. My father says so, too, but it’s nice to get confirmation.”


	3. Chapter 3

_Foamily Musical_

“This is Peter Pettigrew, all right.” Amelia Bones’s voice is hushed as she looks up from casting the charm on the rat in front of her. Harry isn’t sure what the charm told her, since she didn’t cast one that actually transformed the rat back to human, but she seems shaken, and sure.

“That’s impossible! It’s as ridiculous as—”

Fudge stands up and marches out of the meeting room in the front of the bank as Harry’s curse activates again. Harry shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he announces to Amelia Bones and Sirius and the goblins who are gathered to watch. “I wouldn’t have done that if I’d known how disruptive it would be.”

“ _I_ find it disturbing that our sitting Minister wants to attack the goblins so often. Don’t apologize, Mr. Potter.” Madam Bones is staring at the Stunned rat. “So what do we do now?”

“I kill him,” Sirius suggests.

Madam Bones opens her mouth to protest, but Harry points a finger at Sirius. “If you do that, _you_ can be the one to explain to Blackeye why you took up exertion like killing against her strict orders.”

Sirius sighs and slouches down on the other side of the table. “Why is she so bloody terrifying?” he complains.

“Because she’s competent,” Harry says, and turns back to Madam Bones. “We’d like him tried, but honestly, I don’t know if justice in a human court is going to happen. Especially not with so many people still denying that Sirius is innocent.”

“I can make sure it happens.” Madam Bones has her eyes narrowed and her wand tapping against her leg. “But is there a particular reason that you don’t want to try him in a goblin court?”

“He’s guilty already, so we would just kill him,” Stone says. She’s wearing rubies in her ears now, and not looking at Pettigrew. His cowardice and betrayal would taint her, Harry knows. He’s a little surprised that she showed up here at all, but some older goblins think that when you start something, you have to see it through to the end. “But that wouldn’t convince _your_ justice system or allow Mr. Black to be free except in goblin territory.”

“Very well,” says Madam Bones. At least she doesn’t look horrified at the thought of execution the way Harry thinks Fudge and Dumbledore and Snape and probably most humans would. “Then I’ll take him into custody, but I’d like you to swear me with an Oath-Globe.”

Harry sucks in his breath, and Stone’s head turns sharply. No human that he’s ever heard of has consented to be bound by one of those.

“You realize that if we bind you with one of those, your magic would literally force you to keep your word,” Ripclaw says. His fangs shine as he bares them. “And that it would hurl you into dangerous situations and use you like a puppet to make sure that your oath was kept. Many humans would find the situation…disconcerting.”

“It is to my shame that I simply _believed_ Sirius Black had a trial instead of looking into the matter myself,” Madam Bones says in a low voice. “Even though I knew Black when he was an Auror and I found it beyond strange that he would betray James Potter, whom he loved like a brother. Even though I knew that Crouch had gone mad with power and simply started throwing people into prison without a trial and allowing the Aurors to use _Unforgivables._ ”

Harry makes a mental note to himself. It sounds like Crouch might be somebody he needs to declare a blood feud on.

“I need a chance to make up for that shame.” Madam Bones blinks away what look like honest tears and glances around the silent assembly of goblins. “Please. Let me.”

Gorgeslitter whistles through his clenched teeth. Harry knows why. It’s rare for humans to admit shame and guilt, and even rarer to do it in a way that goblins can understand. Madam Bones will get some special consideration in the future.

Harry smiles. He likes Madam Bones very much.

“Very well,” says Stone, and calls to one of her attendant apprentices to bring the Oath-Globe. Madam Bones sits straight and pale on the other side of the table and shows no sign of backing out, although she glares at Pettigrew the whole time. Maybe it’s to remind herself of what she would have to lose by backing out.

When the Oath-Globe appears, glittering like a crystal ball, Madam Bones brushes her hand over it and takes the oath immediately, strongly-worded, without even any suggestions. Harry watches the visionary steel chains writhe around her and breathes out.

Why can’t more humans be like her?

*

“It’s time that you learned about the Argent Ocean, Harry.”

Harry blinks at Toothsplitter, and steps out of the way as she uses her clawed hand to open a boulder-shaped door behind the forge. Harry has often wondered what’s behind it, but accepted that if he can’t overhear it or find a way to open the door on his own, he’s not meant to know yet. “I thought that was a legend.”

“No, it’s real,” Toothsplitter says. “But young goblins aren’t allowed access to it until they’re old enough to resist reaching for the glitter and have shown _some_ control of their impulses.” She eyes him, and Harry does his best to stand straight and not look too smug about what he did to Fudge. “Come.”

She leads Harry through the door, and down a tunnel that twists and slopes as though a hesitant river made it. Harry listens, but he can’t hear water ahead. He always thought that’s what the Argent Ocean was made of, so he gasps when the tunnel abruptly ends at the entrance of another large cavern, and he finds himself standing on a shore made of hammered ivory.

The Argent Ocean curls and foams very slowly on the shore. It’s a _cross_ between molten silver and water, Harry sees, one mixed with the other. The waves are heavy and move in a series of heaves with fewer troughs and crests than normal water, but also more movement than is common in the lakes of molten silver scattered throughout the Realm of Song. He glances at Toothsplitter. “What happens if you touch it?”

“Very good,” says Toothsplitter, smiling. “It would consume you.”

“Why?” Harry asks, startled. There are creatures in the Realm of Song, namely the Deep Ones, that want to eat goblins, but he’s never run into water or metal that wanted to, and he wouldn’t think mixing them would change their essential natures so much.

“Because this is what is left of our enemies that made them dangerous to us,” Toothsplitter says quietly. “Their battle prowess, their memories, their hatred of us. Their souls, in a word.”

Harry’s wonder curls through him like the slow waves as he stares. “Wow. I thought—the Deep Ones seem to hate us enough.”

“That is only mindless hunger, which does sometimes make them dangerous, but not any more than a dragon,” says Toothsplitter dismissively. “And the same for the enemies behind the door with the dragon head that you found last year. The dragon head is there to symbolize that mindless hunger, to tell us the tales of what is there. To remind us of the difference.”

“But why keep these souls here at all? Wouldn’t it be—kinder to let them go on to whatever kind of afterlife awaits them?” Harry knows what awaits _him_ , the way all goblins do. Their souls will sink into the stone and dream, and add some kindness to the Realm of Song for goblins that come after them. There is a _reason_ that water and metal so rarely want to hurt goblins, after all.

Toothsplitter shakes her head. “If we did that, they would hunt us down, Harry. Their souls would come into the Realm of Song and poison it. They declared as much when we found a way to take their battle prowess from them but they still had their ability to speak. Their hatred of us was truly undying.”

Harry nods soberly. Protecting the Realm of Song and other goblins always comes first, no matter what other peoples might say. The most goblins can do is be honest about it, so that other peoples will know the consequences of calling a goblin a liar, or attacking one. “Then what do we do with this?” He waves a hand at the Argent Ocean.

“Seek a way to communicate with them,” Toothsplitter says. “To find a way to soothe their hatred, so that someday the rest of their qualities can be returned to them and they may live again.”

Harry nods slowly. “Does that mean listening to them and transforming their hatred into something other than—argent?” He doesn’t know what else to call molten silver mixed with water. He’s never even heard of it before. Of course, that’s probably because hinting at its existence would mean hinting that the Argent Ocean wasn’t just a story.

Toothsplitter looks at him sharply. “That is the ultimate objective. However, we have only been successful at separating small drops of hatred since the wars. You will have to be very careful, Harry. Among other things, you will have to listen to the Ocean with your mind and not your ears.”

It sounds risky. It sounds dangerous. It sounds confusing.

It sounds thrilling.

Harry smiles at Toothsplitter. “I wondered why you advanced me to journeyman when you didn’t advance Gravensword, and he’s been working at this longer than I’ve been alive,” he says. “But it was this, right? Because being a Master Smith relies on being able to forge things like _souls,_ and that’s more important than skill with metal.”

Toothsplitter wrinkles her lips. “You should remember, Harry, that I am the Master Smith around here, and I make the decisions I want to make. I have not chosen to advance Gravensword so far for my own reasons.”

“I just wanted to be sure that it wasn’t because I’m a wizard in body, so I’ll live a shorter life, and so you advanced me because otherwise I might never get to journeyman.”

Toothsplitter gives him a profoundly disappointed glance, and Harry looks at the cavern floor. “That you would think I would be _influenced_ by such a thing distresses me. We will have to spend some more time studying the ethics as well as the tasks of becoming a Master Smith. And I will ask you to apologize for the aspersion on my honor.”

“I’m sorry, Toothsplitter. I’m still too influenced by human mindsets, sometimes.”

Toothsplitter’s hand settles on his shoulder and ruffles his shirt. “Well, in this case, no harm done. Now I’m going to teach you to listen with your mind.”

_Out on the Deep_

It’s like no other lessons that Harry has ever had before, and he’s glad that Toothsplitter waited until the summer to hold them, because otherwise, he would have been distracted from his Hogwarts exams and essays by this.

It’s also the most _fascinating_ thing Harry’s ever learned.

He goes out in a special boat that’s made of the same hammered ivory as the shore of the “beach,” made from the powdered bones of those ancient enemies. The ribs are pure bone, and the sails are cloth of silver. Harry sits in the center of the boat with his eyes closed, as still and silent as he can be, and then he reaches out in a new direction. It’s as if there’s a whole new eleventh one (besides all the cardinal directions, the four in-between ones, and up and down) that he just never noticed before.

When he’s as still as can be, and as silent, and reaching as hard in the new direction as he can, then he hears it. The whisper of the voices, shifting and dancing in the waves of the Argent Ocean. They’re still there, the whispers and the shouts and the bellows of their ancient enemies.

The Deep Ones don’t call themselves the Deep Ones, Harry discovers, even though they lived deeply underground. They call themselves by a blast of scent that is like rotting violets mingled with heated copper, and they hate the goblins because they wanted to be the only beings living underground, and the goblins interfered with that.

The enemies behind the dragon-headed door do have a name that can translate to a sound, but it’s not much like sounds in either the human or the goblin language. When Harry, after days of reaching after it to hear it on his own the way Toothsplitter requested, asks her how she pronounces it, she shrugs and admits it isn’t perfect, but most goblins use the approximation Henenggrananttan.

The Henenggrananttan hate the goblins because they want absolute silence, and goblin magic and life depends on song. Probably the Henenggrananttan would have hunted wizards down, too, Harry thinks, but the goblin war with them was ancient, and so they were imprisoned and their hatred and everything else transformed a long time before humans could come in contact with them.

Since the goblins won’t give up either the Realm or the Song part of the Realm of Song, Harry can see why peace with their enemies as they were wasn’t possible. So he sits, and he listens, and he reaches out.

And he begins to hear the multiple songs of the ocean, as well.

The water and the silver of the Argent Ocean mingle well enough to be like two threads in one garment, but they’re not the _same_ , any more than silk and linen are if woven together. Harry has to listen to the deep, purling tones of the silver and the high-pitched, piercing ones of the water, while at the same time listening to the separate voices of their enemies. And when he reaches that point, he has to be able to separate the hatred from the pride, and the battle knowledge, and the history. And someday, he’ll have to be able to forge the hatred into something else.

It’s exhausting. Harry can see now why all young goblins are kept away from the Argent Ocean, and also why some apprentices to smiths might never reach journeyman status.

But he knows that, at last, he’s found his life’s work, and he really is meant to follow the smith’s path and not the warrior’s.

_Silver His Throat_

“Remus would like to meet with us,” Sirius said, and Harry shrugged and smiled and agreed. Despite his puzzlement that Remus wants to be classified as a human instead of a werewolf, and his exasperation that he wanted to keep apologizing for the night Harry spent in his office, when _Harry_ is the one who interrupted Remus from taking his potion, he likes Remus well enough.

They meet up in Diagon Alley at Florean Fortescue’s. Harry chooses a strawberry ice, simply because the vanilla reminds him too much of the foam in the Argent Ocean right now, and he’s a little exhausted by it.

Remus orders strawberry, too, and Sirius chocolate. (He’s still wearing an illusion because his trial is really slow in coming). Harry smiles at Remus and asks, “How have you been? I learned that you wouldn’t be coming back as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. I hope it wasn’t something I said.”

“No.” Remus swallows carefully and keeps his lips over his teeth as if he doesn’t want Harry to see them. Harry doesn’t know why, because he got a really good look at them already. “I—Harry, I want to know how involved you are in the goblin war that’s going on.”

“Well, not much involved right now,” Harry admits. “I have other learning to do with my master Toothsplitter, you know. She’s a smith.” He hasn’t even told Sirius about the Argent Ocean, so he certainly won’t tell Remus. “And the actions right now are taking place down in the vaults. I’m not a money-singer, so it isn’t my place.”

“Well,” Remus says, and eats some more of his ice before he says, “Professor Dumbledore thinks it would be best if you detached yourself from this war.”

“He can think that.” Harry finishes his strawberry ice, thinks about it, and then signals for a chocolate one. It looks pretty good, if the expression on Sirius’s face and the fact that he’s filled his mouth determinedly with it is any indication.

“Harry, he’s your _Headmaster._ ”

“You say that like it should mean _master_ ,” Harry says, shaking his head as the bowl of chocolate ice floats over to him. “And why can’t he tell me this himself? Why does he have to have you deliver the message when you don’t even work at Hogwarts anymore?”

Sirius coughs into his spoon. Harry looks at him in concern. Sirius waves his hand and wipes his mouth with his napkin. That at least reassures Harry that there aren’t large chunks of chocolate or something that one of them is going to choke on.

“The last time he talked with you, he was warned away from you.”

“If he can’t speak with me without keeping secrets I should know and calling me a liar and saying I should act more human, then yes, that’s going to happen.”

Remus closes his eyes in what looks like actual pain for a second, then leans forwards. “Harry, you know that You-Know-Who isn’t dead.”

“Voldemort? Yeah, I know.”

Someone on the other side of the shop drops their spoon with a clatter. Harry has his basilisk-fang dagger in his hand before he remembers the way that people tend to react to Voldemort’s name. He sighs and puts his knife away. This is so _disappointing,_ the way that humans do that.

“The Headmaster knows more than anyone about how to fight _him_ ,” Remus continues. “And he doesn’t want you involved in the goblin war because you already have one to fight. He wants you to have a normal childhood as much as possible.”

Harry blinks. “I had a _wonderful_ childhood. I learned so much from the goblins. And I know that I’m a better fighter and smith than most of the people at Hogwarts, anyway.”

“But you shouldn’t need to be learning all that.” Remus learns towards him. “If you had stayed with your—guardians, I mean, the Dursleys, then you would have grown up as a normal child.”

“Say that’s true,” Sirius says abruptly. Harry thinks he must have finished his ice, but then he glances over and sees some still left in the dish. “How would that prepare him for this war that you and Dumbledore want him to fight, Remus? He should be a normal kid but he should also be preparing to fight You-Know-Who?”

“He should have grown up around humans!”

“The Dursleys mistreated me,” Harry interrupts, because he can’t remember if Remus knows that, although Sirius does. But Sirius might not want to bring it up unless Harry does it first. “And _my_ people made sure that I knew the human language and wizard magic, Remus. I wouldn’t have known any of that if I’d stayed with the Dursleys. They didn’t tell me about magic. I don’t know if they knew about it or not.”

Remus stares at him with wide eyes. “They hurt you?”

Harry digs in with his spoon again, nodding. “Of course. They made me sleep in a cupboard and do lots of chores. And they didn’t always feed me.”

Remus shudders all over. For a second, his eyes shine gold, but he doesn’t like to do that in public, so Harry gently touches his hand so he can know he’s doing it. Remus looks away, but when he looks back, his eyes are back to normal again. “Albus never mentioned that.”

“I don’t think he knows,” Harry says. “Or maybe he knows but doesn’t want to admit it to himself. The thing is, he wants me to fight in this war, and I already told him that I’ll cut Voldemort’s head off if he comes after me. And I killed a piece of Voldemort’s soul that was floating around with my basilisk-fang dagger. What else does he _want_ me to do? I don’t think there’s anything else I can do.”

Remus slumps back a little. “Piece of—his soul?”

“Yes, there was a diary that had his soul in it. And there was a piece of soul in my scar at one point, but Blackeye removed that when I was still a kid. I know there are probably other pieces of it out there, but unless Headmaster Dumbledore wants to tell me where they are and go send me to kill them, I have to wait for them to approach me.”

“I,” Remus says, and nothing more. He’s staring off into the distance with tragic eyes, the way he tends to do when someone reminds him that he’s a werewolf. Harry hates to see him do that, so he leans towards him and pats his hand.

“Have some more of your ice,” he says kindly.

*

“And we are here to pronounce Sirius Black _innocent_ , and free.”

Harry catches Sirius’s arm when he sits down heavily in the chair he’s been using in front of the Wizengamot for the past five hours. Mostly, Harry doesn’t want Sirius to fall on the floor. It would hurt his image as well as his arse.

People all over the room start shouting and applauding. Harry is only concerned with Sirius, who is wiping the tears away from his face but sniffling and making more, so it doesn’t help much.

“Do you want me to get you out of here and back to the caverns?” Harry whispers. “I will, just say the word.”

Sirius blows his nose one more time, and casts a Cleaning Charm at his face, not even flinching at the way it must feel as it scours his skin. “No, I’m all right,” he says, and then stands up to start shaking the hands of the various people who are lining up to do it.

Harry looks around, because he had to keep quiet during the concluding phases of the trial, but he has a mission now. He sees the shame-faced man trying to slip out of the courtroom and goes up to him immediately.

“Mr. Crouch, sir!” he calls.

Crouch turns and stares at him. He’s Bartemius Crouch _Senior_ , everyone has been telling Harry, but his son turned out to be a Death Eater and died some time ago. “Do I know you, young man?”

“Not personally,” Harry says, and bows to him. “But my name is Harry Potter, and I’m Sirius Black’s godson. And I was raised by the goblins. That means I’m declaring a blood feud with you. I need to know if you’re going to give me a weregild to make up for the time that Sirius spent in prison, or if you want to settle this with a duel.” He thinks about mentioning that the feud would also be with any other members of Crouch’s family, but as far as Harry knows, he doesn’t have any siblings, and his wife and child are both dead.

Crouch stares at him with his mouth a little open. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t need to listen to _children_ ,” he snaps.

“Then you want to continue the blood feud for years while we snap and snarl at each other?” Harry nods. “That works, sir. I’ll contact you soon with a description of how you’re probably going to feel the impact of it.”

He turns away, but Crouch grabs his arm roughly, the way that Snape tried to do. At least, he does that until Harry swings around and places the tip of his steel dagger against Crouch’s own arm. Crouch immediately freezes in place, staring at Harry.

“You can’t declare a blood feud on me,” Crouch says.

“But I already did. And you didn’t choose a respectful way to answer me, so it’s going to go on for a while.” Harry takes his dagger away when Crouch moves his hand. “You caused Sirius a lot of pain for twelve years by not admitting that he never had a trial and just threw him in prison, so—”

“He was laughing! And saying it was his fault!”

“And, of course, those words never mean anything but that someone is guilty of betraying their best friends,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. Even for a human, this is contemptible. “As I was saying, I’m going to do my best to ruin any endeavors that you’re involved in. The goblins have already withdrawn funding for the Quidditch World Cup, which I know you were working to bring into the country. And there’s rumors of a Tournament at Hogwarts this year? That’s also going to be ruined. I’m warning you in advance.”

“You _brat._ ”

Harry shrugs. Unlike Snape, the blood feud is already in existence, so Harry doesn’t need to react to the insult. “A warning,” he repeats, and then walks over and flings his arms around Sirius.

“You’re free,” he whispers. “What do you want to do next?”

“Things that you’re too young to know about.”

Harry opens his mouth to ask in concern if Sirius is going to forge his enemies’ souls into argent, but then shakes his head. He can’t tell Sirius about the Argent Ocean. Besides, Sirius probably means sex.

“Make sure that you use all the anti-pregnancy spells you need,” he says. “What?” he adds, to the mortified look Sirius gives him.


	4. Chapter 4

_The Wonder of Hearts is Acold_

“I worry about losing my progress with the Argent Ocean when I go back to Hogwarts,” Harry tells Toothsplitter as he drifts in the little boat on the ocean and she watches him. Harry is breathing gently, letting his breath fill the sails and the voices of the Deep Ones and the Henenggrananttan fill his mind. He hasn’t managed to pierce through their desires for solitude and silence yet, but then, goblins have been working on this for centuries and have only spun out a little bit of their hatred. It would be silly to hope for more yet.

“You’ll be practicing the skills with the lessons I send you,” Toothsplitter says. Harry sways to the side as a small wave slaps the boat, and pictures the expression that will be on her face if he opens his eyes. Patient, weary, fond, understanding. “There will be more of them this year, not just the reminders to make sure that you don’t forget smithing practice or battle moves or Gobbledegook.”

“Okay,” Harry says. He knows that he’ll privilege his goblin lessons above the ones that he gets at Hogwarts if he doesn’t have the time for both. He always has. He’s a goblin, and that’s going to stay the same.

“And you will also do well in your Hogwarts classes.”

Harry sighs. A groan will get him a whole morning of beating away at a stubborn blank instead of being able to be on the Argent Ocean. “Why? Does that include Potions and Astronomy? Because Snape will never mark me fairly, and it’s still hard for me to see the stars.”

“Of course it doesn’t include Potions. I would never ask you to put effort into a class taught by a personal enemy. Astronomy is sometimes reflected by patterns of metals underground, so I will ask that you concentrate on it as much as you can, and use charms to enhance your eyesight as needed.”

Harry nods obediently. That sounds a lot better than having to abandon his lessons about the Argent Ocean and all the progress he’s making in listening.

“And for now, tell me what have learned about the difference between the hatred of the Deep Ones and the hatred of the Henenggrananttan.”

*

“So!”

Harry looks up with a small smile as the door of their compartment slides open. Luna is reading _The Quibbler_ upside-down, and Ginny is polishing her knives. “Hi, Fred and George. What is it?”

“What? Can’t we come and visit our best stone-speaking mate?” George flings himself into a seat next to Luna.

“ _Accusing_ us of having an ulterior motive!” Fred clutches his hands to his chest. “That’s a shot to the heart, that is!”

“I can indulge you, or I can ask you to tell me why you came here. Come on, get busy. I have a few more things to think of about how I’m going to ruin this Tournament that Bartemius Crouch is going to put on.”

“That’s what we came about, actually.” Fred flops down next to Ginny.

“Crouch?”

“Sort of.” George leans forwards, his eyes glinting. “You might have heard about some small bets that were made at the Quidditch World Cup. About the Bulgarian Seeker catching the Snitch even though the Irish team still won, that kind of thing.”

“I heard about that,” Harry says, shaking his head. The goblins pulling their funding from the Quidditch World Cup ultimately didn’t cancel it. The teams still played, and people still came and watched the game. At least it meant that the team mascots couldn’t come along and the Ministry couldn’t afford to pay the Obliviators to rent Muggle land, though; the fans had to come and go home the same day.

“So.” Fred crosses his right leg over his left. “If there was someone who wagered against us, and who didn’t pay up—”

“Who owes a lot of gambling debts,” George interjects.

“And some of those to goblins.” Fred nods.

“What would you do? Would you make it your mission to destroy them as well? If they also happened to be involved in the organization of this Tournament?”

Harry grins. “Would this hypothetical person’s name be Ludo Bagman?”

George gazes at him worshipfully. “Wow, little Harrikins is incredibly smart, Gred.”

“A veritable _gen-yus_ , Forge,” Fred agrees, his grin glittering like newly-minted Sickles. “Would you do it?”

“I could do that, since he owes gambling debts to the goblins, but not as part of the blood feud against Crouch. I might call on you to help, mind.”

George bows extravagantly. “We live to serve, Master Goblin Genius sir.”

_Rotten the Fire_

“Are you excited about the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Harry?”

That’s Cho Chang, an older girl in Ravenclaw who seems to be making an effort lately to be friendly. Harry gives her a reserved smile. He suspects that she used to be involved in bullying Luna, or at least laughing at it, and he isn’t ready to let her back into his good graces quite yet.

“I’m excited about the ways I can destroy it.”

Cho’s mouth falls open. Then she covers it and coughs. “What? I mean, why?” She glances around the library. For the moment, they’re by themselves, since Fred and George have Herbology, Luna has gone to find a book that talks about ants, and Ginny is in Potions. Cho lowers her voice anyway. “I mean, you’re joking, I know, but you shouldn’t joke about that kind of thing where someone might take it seriously.”

Harry blinks at her. “I was serious. I’m going to destroy the Tournament because Crouch threw my godfather into prison without a trial, and I have a blood feud with him.”

Cho taps her fingers on the table, then sits down across from him. Harry gives her a faintly puzzled smile. Cho’s never been mean to him, but she has to Luna, and she’s stopped listening to objects the way some of Harry’s yearmates do. Right now, she gives no sign that she hears the sighs of the table over being tapped on, for example.

“I think you should reconsider that,” she tells Harry, what seems to be earnestly. “You shouldn’t wreck the Tournament.”

“Why not?”

“It’s for international and inter-school unity. That has to be more important than what one man organizing it did.”

Harry shrugs. He’s encountered this attitude in human society before, and it never ceases to puzzle him. Hurt a person and pretend it doesn’t matter. It would make sense if they were just the absolute opposite of goblin society, which values the individual, and always did what was the best for the collective good. But instead, they hurt people and think it doesn’t matter, unless the person is them. _Then_ they wail.

Harry thinks it’s just annoying hypocrisy, not a cultural tenet.

“That attitude let Crouch get away with throwing my godfather in prison for twelve years. He spent twelve years around the Dementors. That has to be compensated. The Ministry was going to give him a bunch of Galleons, but the Wizengamot voted it down.”

Cho shakes her head. “Can’t you let it go? It’s in the past. Your godfather is free now. Just let him enjoy that.”

“What’s to keep Crouch from doing it again, or retaliating? I offered to let him duel me, and he didn’t want to. This is the best way to hurt him.”

“But there are other ways to get satisfaction.”

“Like what?”

“Legal means.”

Harry snorts. “Blood feuds are legal in both human and goblin society, though. The Malfoys and the Weasleys still have a feud that’s been ongoing for generations.” Harry just nods to Draco Malfoy or ignores him when he sees him, because the blood feud is Ginny’s and not his, but if he ever has to jump in, he knows what side he’s on, which is all he wants.

“I think that the Malfoys and the Weasleys don’t really fight each other, though.”

“Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy got into a fight with each other in a bookshop a few years ago. That’s what Ginny says.”

Cho gives him a look of frustration and stands up with a little huff. “It would mean a lot to me if you _didn’t_ ruin the Tournament. A boy I know is going to enter his name, and we could have a Ravenclaw Champion. Wouldn’t that matter to you? Don’t you care about your House at all?”

Harry blinks. “But the person who’s selected would probably die. The Tournament killed a lot of people in the past. Why would I want to send someone to their death? Why would that show I cared about my House?”

Cho stalks away. Luna comes out from between the bookshelves at once and sits down in front of Harry, looking at him earnestly. “You know, a few people were talking about you and Cho.”

“How? I’ve never talked to her before today. Except, maybe once? I think she was complaining about some of the things I did to make sure people didn’t bully you.”

Luna leans forwards after giving him a sad little smile. “People were saying that your mum was pretty, and that you might want to date a pretty girl like Cho. They thought she was the prettiest girl in Ravenclaw.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Well, _that’s_ nonsense.”

“Why?”

“First of all, you are a _lot_ more beautiful,” Harry says firmly. “You _listen_ and you’re fair and open-minded and generous with your time, and you’re intelligent and you have honor. What does a pretty face matter next to that? Not that I think I know for sure what humans think is pretty anyway.”

Luna beams at him. “Thank you for saying so. But you said first. What’s the second reason?”

“I don’t have any bad words for goblins who marry humans. I’m sure it works out fine most of the time. Look at Professor Flitwick. But I’m a goblin who’s going to marry a goblin.” Harry shrugs and picks up his detailed plan to ruin Crouch. “That’s just the way it is.”

*

“Harry.” Professor Dumbledore is staring at him again. Harry raises an eyebrow. The Headmaster is seeing him alone, the way he did last year when he wanted to talk about the goblin war. Maybe he’s finally learned that having the Heads of House there doesn’t do much, or maybe Professor McGonagall was open about the distrust Harry sensed in her a while ago.

“Yes, sir?”

Professor Dumbledore slaps some letters on the desk, and Harry looks at them politely. They seem to be thick, with slanting writing across them, but Harry can’t read the writing from this distance. And he doesn’t see any seals or names that would tell him who they were from.

“Do you know what these are?”

“People who are trying to educate you about the goblin wars?”

Professor Dumbledore takes a breath so deep it makes his beard swell out. “No. They are from Headmaster Igor Karkaroff of Durmstrang and Madame Olympe Maxime of Beauxbatons. They both say that you told them their schools shouldn’t compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament.”

“Yes,” Harry says, although he wonders why they wrote to the Headmaster and not him. He’s the one who sent the initial owls, after all.

This time, Dumbledore pinches his nose hard enough that he’ll probably leave dents. Harry frowns. He thinks he has another letter to write after this meeting.

“You cannot threaten them like that, Harry. The Tri-Wizard Tournament is an attempt at international and inter-school cooperation—”

“I didn’t threaten them. I just told them that since I was going to ruin the tournament, they wouldn’t want to waste that time coming all this way, so they would save money if they stayed home.”

“Why are you going to ruin the tournament?”

Harry shrugs. “You probably heard that I declared a blood feud with Mr. Crouch because he threw Sirius in prison without a trial. I’m going to make sure that I ruin the tournament because he’s relying on it to make him popular, and he’s one of the judges. He should lose something that he loves.” It’s not a perfect solution, because Harry knows Crouch can’t care for the tournament as much as Harry cares for Sirius, but at least it should cause the requisite amount of frustration.

“Harry, you cannot ruin the tournament.”

“Don’t worry, Headmaster. I have a whole list of ways to do it. But I don’t think you need to worry about it. I’m not going to do anything that injures anyone else.”

“Harry, I mean that you cannot because I will not permit it.”

Harry sighs. “Sir, please don’t take this the wrong way, because you did a few things right and made sure that we could give you back the money taken from your vault, but what makes you think you can stop me?”

“You’re a student at this castle. I could have you expelled.”

“All right.”

Dumbledore clenches one hand to his heart, as if his nails are going to drill through his chest. Harry frowns. He _must_ send that letter after this conversation, right away. “I thought you wanted to continue being schooled here at Hogwarts.”

“There are people and classes I would miss if I wasn’t here anymore,” Harry admits. “But I can write owls to most of them, and some of them can come visit me. And Professor Flitwick would go with me, sir, you have to know that. I know he had a conversation with you about that last term. So you would get rid of your Charms professor as well as me.”

“I cannot—I _cannot_ allow you to disrupt the Tri-Wizard Tournament. It’s the biggest event in Hogwarts history for two hundred years!”

“The fact that it’s bigger than my godfather’s lack of a trial is precisely part of the problem, sir.”

“Sirius’s trial or a lack of it has nothing to do with Hogwarts. The Tournament is being held _here_!”

“So? I’d think you’d be relieved that I’m going to destroy it. This way, none of your students will die during it.”

Dumbledore outright glares at him. Harry shakes his head. There’s good in the Headmaster; just look at the way he reacted to the description of the Realm of Song that Harry sang for him last year. But like too many humans, he assumes his own concerns are the only ones that matter.

“You will not be allowed to do this,” Dumbledore says. “I will put the Forbidding Charm on you myself if I have to.”

“Goblins are immune to Forbidding Charms, sir. I thought you knew that.”

“Physically, you are a human and not a goblin. I thought _you_ knew _that_.” Dumbledore draws his wand.

Harry grips his daggers, just in case, but he’s already sure he knows what will happen. And he does. The spell passes over him like a delicate spring breeze, and Dumbledore’s wand, which has always been silent, gives a buzz of curiosity. Harry opens his mouth to answer, but Dumbledore interrupts, again. He’s staring between Harry and his wand with a face so pale that he must be having heart palpitations.

“I’m a goblin,” Harry says. “I thought you accepted that, sir, after last year. But you didn’t.” He shakes his head and walks to the door of the office.

Dumbledore doesn’t say anything or come after him. That gives Harry more time to go to the owlery, of course. He does it at once, frowning all the way.

It might cause the tournament to be canceled if Dumbledore hurts himself, but Harry doesn’t want that. He wants to do it himself. And he does have a dollop of concern for the man. Harry’s not human. He can think of more than one thing at once.

_Unsleeping_

Harry watches in resignation as the students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons march into Hogwarts. Honestly, their Heads did them a disservice. They’re either going to die, or get hurt, or be embarrassed when they find out that they came all this way for nothing.

But his attention snaps out of his gloom when they announce how they’re going to choose the Champions. They’re brought out a goblet and lit it on fire.

The goblet is shrieking in pain.

Harry stands up at his seat and shouts, “Why are you _hurting_ that poor thing? Are you just all a bunch of sadists?”

Everyone stares at him, but Harry doesn’t care. He stomps away from the Ravenclaw table and up to the Goblet of Fire and conjures the strongest water he can. It pours over the flames and doesn’t do them any harm.

Harry scowls. Of course they would make sure that their torture of the poor thing wouldn’t easily be reversed. The wizarding world does like to protect its right to torture. The Dementors and Azkaban are a prime example.

He takes the goblet gently from the table and turns around. He’s going to go dunk it in Hogwarts’s lake and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, then he’ll take it into the tunnels of fire and earth through which Toothsplitter sends him his lessons and try the effect of a greater fire.

Hands snatch the goblet away from him, though. Harry wheels around and sees Crouch sneering down at him, with the man the twins complained about—Ludo Bagman—behind him. Harry gives Bagman a long glance. Bagman pales, as if only now remembering that he owes the goblins as well as the Weasley twins money.

“Mr. Potter!” Crouch is shouting. “This is unacceptable interference in the procedures of the Tournament, absolutely unacceptable!”

“What is he talking about?” demands a voice with a French accent that Harry supposes is Madam Maxime. From what he’s heard, she’s half-giant. It’s shameful that she’s retreated so far from her heritage that she can’t hear the goblet. Giants can hear all the elements, including fire. “Why would he be upset that the Goblet of Fire is being used to select the Champions? Does he want to cheat?”

“I can hear it screaming in pain,” Harry tells her, glaring at her and letting the full force of his disapproval come through. She pales, and Harry tries to take the goblet back from Crouch, unsuccessfully. Harry’s hands fall to his daggers. Crouch gasps and takes a step back.

“That’s ridiculous. You’re not a goblin.”

In touch enough with her giant heritage to realize what he must be, then. Or maybe she’s just heard the rumors. Harry gives her an icy smile. “I was raised by them. I consider myself more goblin than human.” He faces Crouch. “Let the goblet go or we’ll have that duel you denied me right here and now.”

“It’s a _cup_.”

“And you’re an idiot. You’ve hurt the world more than it has.”

“That is enough, Harry.” Dumbledore is pressing forwards now. He frowns chidingly at Harry. “I warned you that you wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the Tournament. You are going to let Mr. Crouch do as he needs to do. In any case, the fire will go out tomorrow. The Goblet will not be in pain long.”

Harry stares at him. “Why is twenty-four hours an _acceptable_ amount of torture?”

Dumbledore’s smile tightens. “If you will excuse us, Igor, Maxime, Ludo, Bartemius?” he murmurs. “It seems that Mr. Potter and I have some things to talk about.” He motions Harry quickly towards a small room off to the side of the Great Hall.

Harry goes with him, but he’s not going to let this go, and he’s going to help the Goblet tonight. When Dumbledore shuts the door behind him, though, he doesn’t immediately talk about the Goblet or the Tournament.

“Why did you set a goblin healer on me?” he demands.

Harry frowns. “Because I was concerned about you. The way you were hurting yourself when we had that talk in your office worried me. That usually means that you’re psychologically unhealthy, you know. So I told Blackeye, and if all she’s done is send you owls, then she hasn’t done as much as she _could_ have.”

“You will tell her to desist with the letters at once, Mr. Potter.”

“You think Blackeye does what _I_ tell her to do?” Harry asks in amazement. “Wow, you really know nothing about goblin healers at all.”

Dumbledore stares at him with an expression that Harry is becoming kind of familiar with. It looks like helpless frustration. It could be a lot different, Harry thinks, but Dumbledore won’t _listen._

“You don’t know how many people are depending on this Tournament to spread good will and to entertain the public,” Dumbledore says softly. “It’s a confusing, uncertain time. People are upset about the destruction of Azkaban and the Dementors—”

“Why? I’d think it would be a relief to know that there’s nothing around that can eat your soul anymore.”

Dumbledore stares at the ceiling for a minute. Harry looks up, but there’s nothing there except some flecks of mica that he makes a note to come back and look at later. Fancy Dumbledore noticing it.

“Because the prison and the Dementors were a means of keeping criminals safe and secure,” Dumbledore says, through teeth that definitely are clenched. Harry is just lucky there are no warriors around who might take Dumbledore’s locked jaw as a threat. “People who are insane or Dark wizards and might hurt them.”

“And all the people in Azkaban are like that?”

At least Dumbledore is smart enough to realize what he means. “Not everyone is innocent like Sirius, Harry.”

“But how do we _know_ that? Mr. Crouch put a lot of people in prison without trials. Some of them could be innocent, too. He did that even though he gave some Death Eaters trials, like his son,” Harry adds, turned onto a side-path. “Why?”

Dumbledore closes his eyes and shakes his head. “We have wandered from the topic. The point is, there are many people in the wizarding world who are confused and uncertain—”

“And cowards.”

“What?”

“I would have received more offers to duel me if they weren’t also cowards.”

Dumbledore massages his forehead for a second. Harry shakes his head. He will have to write another letter to Blackeye about Dumbledore’s headaches. He supposes it shouldn’t surprise him, since Dumbledore is an old human, and they have more health problems, but it’s still a little concerning that apparently the man wasn’t taking care of himself at all before Blackeye started sending him letters.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Dumbledore continues, “we need the Tournament to—give people something else to think about.”

“To distract them from the goblin rebellion?” Harry nods. “Well, I suppose you would need it, since you don’t have Minister Fudge making speeches anymore that can do that. But you can’t really think I would happily work against my own people, sir. I have even more reason to destroy the Tournament right now.”

Something seems to break behind Dumbledore’s eyes. He bends down and hisses, like he’s been studying the language of snakes, “ _Fine._ You go ahead and _try._ You won’t be able to put the fire in the Goblet _out_.”

He sweeps out of the room, while Harry trails after him, wondering if there’s a disease that makes people emphasize the last words of sentences. He’ll have to ask Blackeye. He’s sure that she’ll know how to treat it.

And he _is_ going to put the fire out.

*

Except it turns out to be impossible.

Harry sits by the Goblet of Fire later that night, after a bunch of people have come and dropped their names in it, deaf to the Goblet’s wailing in pain.

He took it to the Lake. He fetched some of the water from the Realm of Song that he keeps with him to remind himself of home and dropped it on the flames. He cast all the flame-resistance charms he knows. He tried sticking his basilisk-fang dagger in the fire, on the theory that something that can destroy an enchanted soul-receptacle should be able to destroy these flames.

Nothing has helped. When Harry tried to kidnap the Goblet to freedom beyond the bounds of the school and send it through the fire-tunnels to the Realm, where goblins smarter than him would be able to figure out how to save it, a spell he hadn’t noticed snapped into being and tugged the Goblet back to the Great Hall.

Harry stands up, finally. For some reason, most of the people who have been coming into the Hall to drop their names have frowned at him. They don’t seem to think he should be able to get inside the Age Line that Dumbledore drew about the Goblet.

That Age Line focuses on whether the humans approaching it are above seventeen, though. Harry steps easily past it because he’s a journeyman smith and he’s fought in a war and the goblins acknowledge his competence, so as far as his people are concerned, he’s an adult.

He stands close to the Goblet and touches it gently. It moans at him.

“I’m so sorry,” Harry whispers, blinking away tears. “At least the fire should go out tomorrow and you won’t suffer any longer. But I should have been able to do something to stop them hurting you. I’m sorry.”

He swallows and reaches into his pocket for the twist of parchment that’s there, proclaiming his name and that he’s a resident of the Realm of Song. He can’t help the Goblet, but he can avenge it.

He throws his parchment into the flames, and for a moment, they spark and wave back and forth, so brilliant a white and blue that Harry knows the Goblet has heard him. He rests his hand gently against the base of it. Then he turns and walks back to Ravenclaw Tower, so he can get some sleep.

His bed won’t be satisfied unless he sleeps in it _some_ , and the last thing Harry wants is to make an object angry when he failed the Goblet so badly.

_Unlooked For_

“The Champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum!”

There’s clapping and hooting as the stern boy with the dark eyes, who the twins told him caught the Snitch at the World Cup, stands up from the Slytherin table and walks to the front of the Great Hall. Dumbledore directs him into the little room where he spoke with Harry yesterday.

“The Champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour!”

The girl who’s probably part Veela stands up from a few seats down from Harry. Harry nods politely to her, but she rakes him with her eyes and goes past. Harry sighs. The Veela never _have_ got over their loss to the goblins of the Kerinnike Clan in that wager centuries ago, but they shouldn’t have picked arm-wrestling.

“The Champion for Hogwarts is Cedric Diggory!”

The boy who stands up from the Hufflepuff table worries Harry. He’s been nice sometimes, and was one of the few upper-year students who wanted to learn to listen to objects when Harry first came to Hogwarts. Harry gnaws his lip even as the Hufflepuffs explode into cheers. He didn’t see Cedric come to put his name into the Goblet, or they would have had Words. He must have done it after Harry went to bed.

Dumbledore opens his mouth to make some sort of grand announcement, but the Goblet’s flames spark and leap again, and Harry’s parchment pops out. Harry smiles. He enjoys the puzzled frown on Dumbledore’s face second only to the sigh of relief the Goblet gives as the fire goes out at last.

The Headmaster unfolds the parchment. “And the Champion for the Realm of Song is…Harry Potter.”

Harry stands up and waves. “Hi,” he says, and then he walks towards the little room where the rest of the Champions have gone. “Don’t bother,” he adds, as Dumbledore walks down rapidly towards him. “I know the way.”

The school is roaring in disapproval behind him, but the Goblet laughed before it went out. That’s the only thing Harry cares about right now.

Besides, now that he’s in the Tournament as a contestant, he can ruin it _much more efficiently._ Toothsplitter will be proud when he tells her. She always wants him to be efficient.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all the reviews! This is the end of this part of the story, but the arc will continue, with the second half of Harry’s fourth year, when I next update this story between Samhain and the winter solstice.

_The Song I Can Sing_

There are lots of objections to Harry participating in the Tournament. Harry has answers to all of them. Honestly, they should have had better answers to his questions about why their torture of the Goblet was necessary, and then maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

“But there should only be three Champions!”

“I’m part of the Realm of Song, not a Champion for a school. Unless you’re going to say that goblins shouldn’t get to participate in a human competition?”

“You’re stealing the glory from Cedric!”

“I’m not the Hogwarts Champion, so it shouldn’t count.”

“You’re too young!”

“The Goblet and the Age Line didn’t think so.”

“You’re going to get killed!”

“Why me and not the other three people who think they’re skilled enough to survive the Tournament?”

“You’re only doing this to ruin the Tournament!”

“Yes? I told you that.”

The _Daily Prophet_ runs lots of stories about how Harry probably cheated and he’s probably conspiring with goblins to ruin the Tournament, but that just gets half the money taken away from the reporters’ vaults—mostly one reporter, Rita Skeeter—the way it did from Dumbledore’s, so then they print retractions. They would probably be filling out the stories with comments from Fudge, but his tongue locks up when he gets within one hundred meters of a reporter. Harry is, frankly, amazed and sad. How hard can it be not to tell a lie? Harry is only fourteen by human reckoning and he manages it all the time.

Luna is a little worried about Harry, but she understands when Harry explains that he’s doing this to avenge the Goblet, and the twins think what he did is brilliant. Ginny is the one who comes and finds Harry in the library one day when he’s studying ways wizards conduct blood feuds and gives him a tragic stare.

“What is it?” Harry asks, putting away the book so he can concentrate on her. “Are you okay? Did one of your knives break?”

“I’m so worried you’re going to get killed,” Ginny whispers, and practically collapses into the chair across from him.

Harry gets up and goes around the table to hug her. She clings to him, and Harry pats her shoulder. He didn’t think about this. Luna is the only other human he knows really well who’s Ginny’s age, and Luna is perfect and unique. He didn’t think about how someone who acts more human would take it.

“Sorry,” he says gently. “But it really is the best way to get vengeance on the people who tormented the Goblet and put my godfather in prison without a trial and owe debts to the goblins.”

Ginny sniffles and hugs him, then sits back. “But couldn’t you just curse them all, the way you did with Minister Fudge?”

“I cursed him partially to prevent his murder.” Harry sits down in the chair next to her, which hums pleasantly. “He was in the bank and insulted us, you see, and there was no way he was going to be able to leave in one piece unless I did something. Even then, some of the goblins think my curse was too merciful. I would be dishonoring Sirius if I’d cursed Crouch instead of declaring the blood feud with him.”

Ginny sighs. “Do you even know what the Tasks are?”

“The first one, I’m hearing about.” Harry has heard the whispers of the trees in the Forbidden Forest, and he’s going to go out and confirm them later tonight. “But remember, I’m not going to participate in them or try to win them. I’m going to mess them up.”

“Doesn’t the magic of the Goblet force you to participate in them?”

Harry shakes his head. “It makes it so that you can’t withdraw, but that’s all right with me. I don’t want to. I could stand in front of a manticore and get stung if I wanted to and it would still count.”

“A _manticore._ ”

Harry probably shouldn’t have said that, he reflects. Ginny looks like she’s worse off now than before. Harry pats her shoulder, a little awkwardly. “Um, I mean, I don’t think there will be any manticores in this Tournament. There was one in a past Tournament, though.”

“So why wouldn’t they bring it back?”

“They don’t want to bring back tasks they already did once.” Harry rolls his eyes a little. “It makes it less entertaining or something.”

Ginny is silent for a little while, then sighs. “I still wish you’d managed to do it in a different way that wouldn’t put you in danger, but the more I hear about it, the more I think that you really need to destroy this Tournament.”

“That’s because you’re sensible,” Harry says.

*

Harry stands staring, stunned and indignant, at the huge stone enclosures they have the nesting dragons in.

 _Nesting dragons!_ Here with their eggs!

Harry is so indignant that he nearly gets caught when Crouch and Bagman come over to have a conversation about how “exciting” the Task is going to be, and then when Karkaroff sneaks through the forest to, of course, get some intelligence he can take back to Krum. Then Hagrid comes escorting Madame Maxime, and of course she’s going to tell Delacour what’s going on. Harry waits for a little, concealed in the roots of a tree that happily grew up and around him when he asked, but no one comes past for Diggory.

So Harry decides he’ll need to send an owl to him, and he trots back to the school shaking his head. This is outrageous that they pulled sensitive nesting dragon mothers here. He doesn’t know if he should tell Luna or not. He’s afraid that she’ll cry.

He can handle this, better than he was able to handle the fire tormenting the Goblet, but he’s going to need help. Harry grimaces. At least it’s still a couple weeks until the First Task and he has the time to send messages to his people.

_Melodies Strange_

“You realize that there will be a charge for this.”

Harry steps back with a small bow to Ruby, the large goblin in front of him who’s the premier Master Singer in all the Realm. “I know that, sir. I’m willing to do anything.”

Ruby nods. He doesn’t need Harry to specify that it would be anything that doesn’t go against his honesty or honor. Real goblins understand that. “Well, then.” He moves away from the tunnel that opens, with a flicker of fire, in the center of the Forbidden Forest, and studies the dragons in their stone enclosures. “I’m glad that we came as seven.”

Six other Master Singers follow Ruby. Harry stands carefully off to the side and out of their way. All of them wear garnets, the stones more perfectly tuned to music than any other. Master Singers don’t just study musical magic, the way other goblins do, but dedicate their lives to it. They can do things with notes in the ways Master Smiths can with metal.

“Nesting mothers?” Ruby’s nostrils flare as he glances at Harry.

Harry nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Humans aren’t idiots, but sometimes they desperately want you to think so,” Ruby mutters, and taps his garnet. The others do the same at the exact same moment, and the night fills with a low hum.

When the Master Singers begin to vocalize, it’s hard for Harry to hear at first. There’s a reason that he didn’t train as a Master Singer, beyond smithcraft intriguing him more. His ears are still human, and he has a hard time hearing the higher notes.

But then they begin to descend into the whispering shrillness he _can_ hear, and the dragons’ heads appear over the edge of the barrier.

The Hungarian Horntail is the first one to begin to sing back, her voice deep enough that Harry feels it mostly as muffled booms under his feet. The Chinese Fireball joins in second, the delicate fringe around her head lifting and blowing back, dancing more than she sings. The Welsh Green ornaments her song with small movements of her wings, and the Swedish Short-Snout with tiny blasts of fire.

The fire makes Harry worry lest someone comes into the Forest to see what’s going on, but Ruby and the other Master Singers appear calm. Their voices are weaving visible lines of light through the darkened air, twisting back and forth above the ground like creations of gold and silver wire. Harry watches in fascination, but keeps his gasps to himself. The last thing their song needs is disruption from _his_ voice.

The wires rise and slowly slide forwards, hovering outside the stone barriers. The dragons must make the final decision about whether to accept the goblins’ help.

Again the Hungarian Horntail moves first, thrusting her head through the first loop of gold. It trails across her scales in endless patterns, until it looks as though she’s standing in the middle of a waterfall reflecting light. Harry is held still by awe now. He’s amazed that he managed to live well enough to see something like this happen in the middle of a shining forest at night.

The Welsh Green is next, seizing one of the silver “wires” to draw it towards her. She snorts as it caresses her wings, but doesn’t stop them from flapping. Harry shakes his head. Yet another reason he could never be a Master Singer. He’s used to immediate results from the song magic. This is taking so long that he knows he wouldn’t have the patience to adjust his voice, bit by bit, to the reality of what’s happening here.

The Swedish Short-Snout also gets covered in silver, and the Chinese Fireball in gold. Towards what Harry knows must be the end of the first movement—he can tell that much from the way the goblin and dragon voices are rumbling and gaining momentum—the dragons look like sculptures lit from within. Harry blinks back tears.

Then the second movement begins, and this time, the dragons are trumpeting and squealing along. Harry shoots a worried glance towards the castle, but relaxes when he sees a drifting wall of white notes between him and it. He should have known the Master Singers would have protected their project from being overheard. An interruption right now would be disastrous for all of them.

It happens with the Hungarian Horntail first, again. She rears up and spreads her wings wide, as if she wants to bathe in the miracle that is light and magic and music combined. And the gold builds to a rich spark on her chest and wings, and then slides up her neck, and a second, perfect replica of herself steps away from her.

For a moment, it glows gold. Then that fades, and it folds its wings and gives the night an evil glare, and Harry does have to bite his lip against the laughter this time. He wouldn’t know that wasn’t the real dragon if he hadn’t seen the formation of the copy happen.

There are, a few minutes later, a silver Swedish Short-Snout and a golden Chinese Fireball glowing and then forming themselves into copies the same way. For some reason, it takes longer to get a silver Welsh Green, but none of the Master Singers seem upset about that, so Harry relaxes. Then the loops of light leap dancing into the air and separate many times, over and over, budding like a tree, and Harry wonders why until he realizes that the Master Singers are copying the eggs.

The dragons seem less calm about this part of the process. One of the silver loops actually goes into the Hungarian Horntail’s mouth. But she doesn’t stop singing, and there’s a calming thread throughout the music that feels to Harry like someone answering her doubts, so in the end it doesn’t harm anything.

As the eggs appear one by one like sparks beneath the copied dragons, they react like good mothers, bending down their necks and rolling the eggs underneath their bodies. Harry is relieved to see that their tails scrape across the stone barriers and the ground with realistic sounds. To create a copy that can be felt and heard and smelled as well as seen is a special talent of the Master Singers, but Harry has only seen the ones that are meant to fool the eye alone before.

It takes an enormous expenditure of magic, but, well, humans don’t have the right to force dragons to do something like this for a stupid _Tournament._ And the replicas only have to last a few weeks, so after that the music will come back to the Master Singers.

When the copies are finished, the Master Singers approach the enclosures and open the doors, freeing the dragons of the chains holding them captive. Harry was warned to stay well back during this part of the procedure, but he didn’t actually need the warning. He would smell human to the dragons, and he didn’t join the singing. There’s every chance they’ll be suspicious of him.

Two Master Singers remain behind the others, crooning softly. The magic that comes from them forms into crystalline dragons that Harry’s eyes can barely make out in the darkness. He’s betting they’ll smell strongly to the dragons they’re meant for, though. And they carry baskets like chandelier drops on their claws. When the dragons are formed, they fly over and begin to gather the mothers’ eggs.

The mother dragons watch vigilantly, but make no attempt to interfere. When the crystalline ones turn and arrow into the sky, the mothers follow right behind. Harry smiles. He’s sure that they’ll keep going after their eggs, back to the dragon preserves they came from, rather than stopping to devour a random human here or there.

Harry relaxes with a long sigh as the last notes of the song begin to spiral down and fade. It feels ridiculous, since he’s only the one who watched and not the one who contributed any of the magic or his voice, but still, his head aches and his hands are trembling as he watches the last flap of dragon wings leave the area and the copies settle down behind their stone fences.

“Will any humans see them?” he asks quietly.

Ruby gives him a tolerant look. “Of course not, _amaracazh._ The crystalline dragons will guide them along paths that humans don’t frequent, by night, and do have the magic to shield themselves and their followers if humans might see them anyway.”

Harry nods with some relief. He would hate to think that something he argued for put anyone, dragon, goblin, or human, in a more awkward position.

He also notices, as he waves good-bye to Ruby and the others, that the Master Singer chose to refer to him simply as a speaker instead of “young” _amaracazh._ That makes another pulse of happiness surge through his soul. He’s growing up, and he hopes he’s doing it with honor.

_The Music Is Broken_

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry eyes Dumbledore. The man invited him to his office, for tea, and Harry accepted because it was polite. But they’ve just been sitting here for ten minutes, with Dumbledore twitching a little and looking at the walls and fireplace. Harry has started to wonder if he’s waiting for someone. Who, though?

At least now he’s spoken.

“Sir,” Harry says, and watches Dumbledore slowly huff out a breath.

“I want you to tell me why you haven’t protested what we’re doing with the dragons.”

Well, so Dumbledore isn’t going to pretend to keep the secret of what the First Task involves. That’s interesting. Harry eyes him. “What do you mean, sir? I thought you would be upset if I protested. You didn’t _want_ me to ruin the Tournament, did you?”

“I did not.” Dumbledore’s voice is clipped. The fire pops, and he leaps in his seat and looks over his shoulder. Harry waits until he turns around again.

“Why, then? What do you want me to do? Did you want me to go and free the dragons?”

“No!” Dumbledore reaches towards his face, then drops his hand. “I wanted to know why you weren’t protesting.”

“Because I know what’s going to happen,” Harry says simply. “And many people have told me that the dragons aren’t going to be harmed or in danger. In fact, the Dragon-Keeper I talked to told me the Champions were more likely to be in danger, going up against such huge beasts.”

A Dragon-Keeper who introduced himself as Charlie Weasley, Ginny and the twins’ brother, did say that to Harry. Of course, he doesn’t know that the goblins replaced the dragons. But it was sincerely meant all the same. Harry thinks he could get to like Charlie, who was obviously more concerned with innocent beasts hauled here against their will than silly people who put their names in the Goblet on their own.

“What if someone does hurt a dragon?”

“I just don’t think it’s likely to happen.”

“What if _you_ have to hurt a dragon to survive?”

Harry grins. “What makes you think I’m going to treat this as a contest at all, sir?”

Dumbledore shakes his head. “Get out, Mr. Potter. And keep in mind that if you really are an adult, you can be tried under human laws for interfering with the Tournament.”

“I’m an adult by goblin standards, but not human ones. Although, if you’ve changed that, then it changes other things, too. It means that you should tell me all the secrets you’re hiding instead of pretending that I’m too young to hear them. And it means that Snape should duel me, and so should Crouch, instead of hiding behind the idea that—”

“Get _out_!”

Harry chuckles and stands. He enjoys fighting the Headmaster with words, since it’s the only way the man will ever consent to fight him. “All right, sir.”

As he leaves, there’s a sharp snap from the fire, and Harry looks back in time to see a Howler manifesting there. It tears itself open and begins to speak in Blackeye’s precise, dry voice that she only uses when she’s _really_ angry, telling the Headmaster that she knows he was up late last night instead of sleeping the way he should.

Dumbledore lifts his wand as if he’s going to shoot a curse at the letter. Harry shakes his head and leaves.

*

“You are a leetle boy who should not be here!”

“And you’re an insulting Veela.”

Harry doesn’t bother looking up from where he’s sharpening his daggers. He won’t actually need them in the coming Task, of course, but it’s the thought that counts. He hears Delacour’s gasp, and then she comes over and stands in front of him.

“You cheated to get your name in the Goblet!”

“And you put it in there thinking you were _really_ going to win eternal glory? Come on, Delacour. Which of us is _really_ the stupid one here?”

There’s a long pause. Harry can sense Krum and Diggory looking at him and Delacour, but he doesn’t bother staring back. The other Champions don’t seem to know what to make of him. Sometimes they treat him as a serious competitor, sometimes they accuse him of cheating like Delacour did, and sometimes they just act upset that he wants to ruin their silly fun.

_Like it would have been fun for the dragons! Like it was fun for the Goblet!_

Harry sighs away his anger. That’s why he’s avenging the Goblet and he made sure the dragons were safe. The humans _should_ have considered them, sure, but they didn’t. So it’s up to him.

“I will show that my school is the best one.”

Harry looks at Delacour. Her nose is so far up in the air that the tent ceiling is taking note. “By getting yourself half-killed and some of your hair burned off?”

Delacour lifts her hand to her hair before she can stop herself, then lowers it and glares at Harry. “It will not burn off my ‘air!”

“Okay,” Harry says, and then Ludo Bagman bustles in and starts telling them to get ready, that the crowd is waiting. Krum is going first, apparently.

Harry smiles and stands up, moving over to the side of the tent entrance where he can see both the dragon, a Chinese Fireball, and Bagman’s face. He hopes the twins enjoy what’s going to happen in just a minute.

Krum struts out into the middle of the arena and lifts his wand. Harry tenses in anticipation. Krum barks a curse that lifts straight and true from his wand, aimed at the eyes of the replica Chinese Fireball.

The curse touches, the replica throws its head back and screams—

And explodes in a shower of sparks.

The audience leaps back with a cry. The sparks rain down among them harmlessly, of course. They’re as much illusions as the replica dragon was in the first place. Harry wonders, for a second that darkens his mood, what they would be doing if the dragon had been real and hit by Krum’s curse. Would they be cheering while the poor thing staggers around, crushing her eggs and screaming in pain?

But then he shakes that off and glances sideways at Bagman, who seems to have stopped breathing entirely.

He’ll keep that memory for the twins.

“A-a remarkable reaction!” Bagman croaks, shaking his head and trying to return to the commentary. “One must assume that young Mr. Krum doesn’t know his own strength—”

The Chinese Fireball’s eggs begin to explode into bright showers of sparks as well. One by one, they all leap up like candles on a Muggle birthday cake, and Harry chuckles a little as he watches them. In seconds, they’re gone, and the golden egg that the Champions were supposed to “take” is the only one left lying there. The Master Singers’ music didn’t catch it because it wasn’t a living, organic thing, the only kind of matter their song was aimed at.

There’s silence for a second before shrieks arise. Most of them, Harry notes in interest, are accusing Krum and Headmaster Karkaroff of cheating. It seems humans really like to do that.

“How could you _do_ this?” a voice, louder than the rest, booms. That must be Madame Maxime, Harry thinks, watching her idly. She denies her giant heritage, from what he’s heard, but she’s taking advantage of it now. She stands up to loom over Karkaroff, her hands on her hips. “We all want our Champions to win, but this is going too far!”

“I had nothing to do with this!” Karkaroff yells back. “Do you think that—”

“Um, excuse me.”

Harry turns his head. Krum has gone in and picked up the golden egg they were “supposed to win,” and he’s holding it as he glances back and forth between the shouting people. “Have I won?” he demands.

There’s more shouting. Harry lounges back and observes, while Bagman tries to interject and other people accuse Karkaroff and Karkaroff accuses Dumbledore and Dumbledore is obviously looking around for Harry.

“Did you have something to do with this?”

It’s Diggory, standing beside Harry and also staring at the chaos. Harry nods. “Of course. I did warn them that I was going to ruin the Tournament.”

“But it’s an important effort in international magical cooperation!”

Harry tilts his head towards the chaos of tirades about cheating. “Does that sound to you as if anyone’s interested in that, instead of upset that they think Karkaroff did something to help Krum win?”

“I mean,” Diggory mumbles. “They could have been, if you hadn’t interfered.”

Harry shakes his head. “Everyone wanted their own school to win. You know that someone would have helped you to cheat if I hadn’t told you about the dragons. And Maxime and Karkaroff were helping their people cheat. And no one cared enough about _my_ cheating to try and get me out of the Tournament. Bagman even told me he thought it would make the bloody thing more exciting.” He snickers as he sees the forlorn expression on Bagman’s face now. “This was never about cooperation. It was about distraction from the stupid, terrible job Fudge and Crouch are doing.”

“But why ruin it?”

“Crouch put my godfather in prison without a trial for twelve years.”

“But he’s free now.”

Harry just shakes his head as Bagman calls for Diggory to come out. Diggory gives Harry a half-suspicious look from the corner of his eye and walks out to face the Swedish Short-Snout.

Diggory Transfigures a rock into a dog, which runs around and distracts the illusory dragon for a while. The crowd starts cheering again, probably thinking that Harry’s vengeance is over. But then the dragon’s “fire” brushes against the Transfigured dog, and the Short-Snout and her eggs go up in sparks, too.

There’s more yelling. More shouting. Bagman’s jaw is getting acquainted with his chest. And Diggory goes in and takes the golden egg, then stands there with it like Krum is doing.

Now people are accusing Dumbledore of cheating, using the same trick that Karkaroff did. Harry gives in to the urge to put his hand over his eyes. They’re that _stupid_?

“But it is not true.”

Harry glances at Delacour. “Of course it isn’t. But they would prefer to think that someone cheated than that someone took the dragons away from this bloody game.”

Delacour turned to look at him steadily. “All the dragons are gone?”

“Free. Back in their reserves.”

Delacour sighs and walks out of the tent without another word. Harry watches her face the Welsh Green, and begin to use some kind of enchantment that seems designed to put it to sleep. Maybe she thinks that if she doesn’t directly touch the dragon or any egg except the golden one, the dragon won’t turn into sparks and she’ll put on more of a show.

But of course, the instant that she comes near enough and the dragon opens her “eyes” and shoots her “fire,” it ends up dissolving into sparks. Delacour looks more upset that the illusory fire touched her hair than anything else. But she goes over and gets the golden egg and stands there defiantly, while people start accusing Madame Maxime of cheating.

Harry wants to bang his head against something, but the flimsy walls of the tent are nothing like good, solid stone. He settles for tapping a dagger against the back of his head.

Then the tent entrance stirs, and Dumbledore marches in. Harry brightens up. Maybe Dumbledore will let Harry ram his head against Dumbledore’s skull. It must be pretty solid, what with everything.

Dumbledore doesn’t appear to be in a good mood, though. “You did this!” he screams, wagging one finger in front of Harry.

Harry calms himself down. That’s not Dumbledore saying that he could take Harry with one finger in a duel, because they’re not in Gringotts. “Of course,” he says. “I thought you would be relieved. Weren’t you upset because I _wasn’t_ doing something?”

Dumbledore appears to be speechless. Then Bagman calls stubbornly, “Harry Potter, to face the Hungarian Horntail!”, and Dumbledore picks up Harry and practically throws him out of the tent.

Harry rolls easily and lands on his feet, but he already knows that he’s going to have to tell Blackeye about the signs of Dumbledore’s deteriorating mental state. He looks up at the illusory Hungarian Horntail, who bends down towards him and opens her mouth.

Harry stands there and lets the fire wash over him. Of course the audience screams, and of course the illusion explodes. The fake eggs disappear, and Harry could walk over and pick up the golden egg if he wants to.

He doesn’t particularly want to. In fact, he’s been spending most of the time when the other Champions were studying dragon-defeating spells studying one particular spell. He lifts his wand and whispers, “ _Aurum obdico._ ”

The golden eggs spark and whir in their owners’ arms, and then crack down the middle, releasing an inelegant screeching noise that sounds a lot like Mermish. Harry wrinkles his nose. That didn’t work the way it was supposed to, which was to completely and painlessly destroy the golden eggs.

Then he realizes why it didn’t work, and scowls. Humans are cheap, and they didn’t make the eggs out of pure gold, but used some gold-plated metal. Brass, apparently, from the complaining voices coming from the eggs. Harry sighs and uses the right spell to Vanish the brass.

“Harry Potter!”

From the sound of his voice, Dumbledore has largely lost it. Harry generously decides not to hold anything he says against him. You can’t demand that people duel you or be responsible for what they say when their mind is melting.

He does glance into the stands and wink at the twins, who give him evil grins and thumbs-up gestures.

And he finds Crouch, and mouths, _This is just the beginning._

Crouch looks ill, as he should. Well, maybe he’ll cancel the rest of the Tournament and Harry won’t even have to do anything.

_Who Now Can Tell_

“Mr. Potter, you must have a date to the Yule Ball.”

Professor Flitwick looks unhappy, saying that. Harry sighs. The dragons weren’t enough to force Crouch to cancel the Tournament, and so they have to all do this nonsense, along with waiting for more golden eggs to be delivered.

“It’s all right, Professor,” he says, and pats Professor Flitwick’s shoulder. “I know it’s not your fault. I’ll have someone.”

Professor Flitwick looks happy now that he’s delivered the message and Harry hasn’t blamed him, and they are alone in the Charms classroom, so he switches to Gobbledegook. Apparently Dumbledore has been telling him not to speak it in front of human students because it “makes them nervous not to understand.” Harry proposed language lessons, but he also accepted Professor Flitwick’s solution of just not speaking it in front of those students.

“Perhaps Miss Lovegood? It seems to me that you understand each other well.”

Harry smiles in amusement. “We do, but she wouldn’t want to go as my date. Other people’s expectations constrain her enough. People already think she’s mad, and they would think she was my girlfriend if we went together. And people would have expectations of me, too. They would think I’m willing to date humans. I don’t want to spread false messages.”

Professor Flitwick blinks. “You are only attracted to goblins?”

Harry nods. “Of course. The humans I know who have the kind of integrity and understanding that I desire in a partner are pretty rare, and I want to marry within my culture.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right about that, and about not wanting to send false messages,” Professor Flitwick admits. “Even I had assumed that Miss Lovegood was your girlfriend, or perhaps Miss Weasley.”

“They’re my friends,” Harry says simply, using the Gobbledgook word that means “accepted, trusted friend who is not interesting to me romantically.”

That gets him a nod. “I regret that more humans cannot understand our language,” Professor Flitwick adds. “There would be fewer misunderstandings, not only between goblins and humans, but also between humans of different intentions.”

Harry agrees with that fervently, but he also knows that it’s not going to change any time soon. He wonders if that’s a sign of maturity that he can accept that.

*

“Mr. Potter, you must have a _date._ ”

Harry blinks at Dumbledore, who has suddenly appeared in the little room in front of the doors of the Great Hall where the Champions and their dates are waiting. Delacour is standing with an older Ravenclaw named Roger Davies, and Krum with a Gryffindor girl named Granger who Harry knows is friends with Ginny. Diggory has Cho Chang with him. It makes Harry doubly glad that he never dated her like Luna thought he might.

“Oh, I do, sir,” he says. “Here she comes now.” He heard the footsteps in the corridor before Dumbledore did, but then, he has keener hearing than most humans.

Dumbledore turns with a little frown, and then freezes as Blackeye steps into view. She’s adjusting the flowing diamond battle-armor draping her, the nearest thing to robes she has. She takes Harry’s arm with a faint smile before she focuses on Dumbledore.

“We shall have much to talk about later concerning your health,” she says, and points one clawed finger at him. “You are not to stay up too late or drink too much alcohol, and refrain from abusing your face and chest.”

The other Champions are staring so hard that they almost don’t walk forwards in time when a horn blows and the doors open. And then everyone stares at Blackeye and Harry as they walk into the Great Hall.

Blackeye doesn’t care. She turns to Harry and nods solemnly, acknowledging the favor she’s doing him. Harry bows deeply in return and draws his daggers as Blackeye snaps a circle of blue stones into being around her head.

“The second battle-dance,” Blackeye says.

“Yes, of course,” Harry murmurs, warmth rising in his veins. This is the goblin kind of dancing. If they didn’t want to see it, he thinks, they had every chance to cancel the Tournament, but they chose not to.

Blackeye lifts her hands. The blue stones dash towards Harry. He uses his daggers to deflect them, leaping and dodging and spinning in place. He also sends sparks off his daggers towards Blackeye that she has to dodge, dancing herself to control the stones and complete the movements of the second battle-song.

People still stare. One of the ones staring hardest is Crouch, but he turns it into a glare when Harry looks at him. Harry laughs at him. He had his chance, but he refused the duel, he refused to cancel the Tournament, he refused the weregild, he refused every honorable means to pay back his debt to Harry and Sirius. He deserves whatever he gets.

Luna has come as the date of Michael Corner, who’s got better about deciding goblin rebellions are illegal, and she spins around him and Blackeye, clapping. Ginny has the Longbottom boy on her arm, and he watches with what looks like amazement and terror as she draws her knives and takes up an outer position in the dance that will only require her to dodge one missile a minute.

Professor Flitwick toasts Harry from the professors’ table. Dumbledore is staring at Blackeye in frozen dread. Snape is looking off to the side so that he doesn’t have to meet Harry’s eyes.

Harry smiles. There’s plenty wrong with the wizarding world, and he’s old enough now not to think he can change everything or it’s going to be perfect, but he’ll get to be a goblin in the middle of it, and that’s wonderful.

 **The End**.


End file.
